6th Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the CICA member states to be held in October

On October 11-12, 2021, the 6th meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of member states of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) will take place in Nur-Sultan. It is important to note that today Kazakhstan is Chairing the platform (2020-2022).

The CICA is a multi-national forum for enhancing cooperation towards promoting peace, security and stability in Asia. It is a forum based on the recognition that there is a close link between peace, security and stability in Asia and in the rest of the world. The Member States, while affirming their commitment to the UN Charter, believe that peace and security in Asia can be achieved through dialogue and cooperation leading to a common indivisible area of security in Asia where all states co-exist peacefully and their peoples live in peace, freedom and prosperity.

The idea of convening CICA was first proposed by H.E. Nursultan Nazarbayev, First President of Kazakhstan, on 5 October 1992, at the 47th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. The moving spirit behind this initiative was the aspiration to set up an efficient and acceptable structure for ensuring peace and security in Asia.

The two founding documents of CICA are Declaration on the Principles Guiding Relations between the CICA Member States adopted at the First Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs held in Almaty on 14 September 1999 and the Almaty Act, charter of CICA, adopted at the First Summit held in Almaty on 4 June 2002. These two documents became the stepping stone towards the future evolution of CICA.

Following the spirit of the founding documents, CICA pursues its policy based on the principles of sovereign equality, non-interference into internal affairs of the Member States and economic, social and cultural cooperation to achieve its main objective of enhancing cooperation through elaborating multilateral approaches towards promoting peace, security and stability in Asia. All decisions within CICA framework are taken by consensus.

Presently CICA has twenty-seven Member States accounting for nearly 90 percent of the territory and population of Asia. Nine countries and five multi-national organizations, including the United Nations, have observer status.

For more details, please visit the CICA website: https://www.s-cica.org/index.php.