This year’s annual meeting of the Council of Heads of State (CHS) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), that took place on September 15-16, 2022 in the Uzbek city of Samarkand[1] was the first in-person meeting in two years since the onset of restrictions imposed in wake of COVID-19 pandemic.
The meeting was attended by the Heads of State of all SCO permanent members, including some from the organisation’s observer and dialogue partner states as well, such as Azerbaijan, Belarus and Türkiye.
A significant detail about this 22nd regional summit of the SCO is that it took place in the backdrop of highly fluid and volatile international environment which is marked by: armed conflict; economic and strategic crisis; and major power competition manifesting itself in different parts of the world, particularly in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Indo-Pacific.
Although the agenda of the SCO Summit was mainly to discuss major regional security challenges and issues like trade, investment and energy supplies, however, majority of the conversations during the Summit’s proceedings were primarily dominated by the contemporary political and strategic issues being faced by SCO members.
