Statements and Remarks of CICA Secretary General Ambassador Kairat Sarybay

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Welcoming address by CICA Secretary General Kairat Sarybay at the opening ceremony of the Seminar on Combating Cybercrime for the SCO and CICA countries


Distinguished SCO Secretary-General,

Distinguished colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

 

It is my pleasure to welcome the participants of this seminar and
I would like to sincerely thank SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming and our colleagues from the SCO Secretariat for the initiative to hold such a meaningful event.

It is encouraging that this conference is, in fact, one of the first joint projects of the SCO and CICA and serves as a practical result of the 2014 Memorandum of Understanding between the Secretariats of the two organizations. I am convinced that our partnership has significant potential for further mutually beneficial cooperation in other areas as well for the sake of stability, development and prosperity in Asia.

I believe that CICA and the SCO should be seen as complementary regional structures, whose concerted efforts can bring good results. That said, since all SCO Member States are also members of the Conference, CICA may play the role of an “outreach platform” for the SCO, where the experience and achievements of the “Shanghai” cooperation can be scaled across the CICA space.

It is noteworthy that an important step in this direction was taken by the SCO itself, whose leadership emphasized in Samarkand this September the importance of further deepening cooperation between the SCO and CICA to ensure security and stability in the region, as well as on other issues of mutual interest. Support was also expressed for the institutional development of CICA.

I would like to remind you that this year the Conference is marking its 30th anniversary. In 1992, First President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev from the high rostrum of the 47th UN General Assembly put forward an initiative to convene CICA. The subsequent evolution of the Conference was, to a great extent, a response to the need of many Asian states for new forms of interaction and cooperation amid the tectonic changes in the system of geopolitical coordinates taking place at that time.

Over the years, CICA has proved to be an inclusive and effective international forum for confidence building and cooperation, taking its rightful place in the matrix of multilateral interaction in our region.

The Sixth CICA Summit held on 13 October in Astana brought together 52 delegations. This large-scale meeting has adopted a significant package of documents, the most important of which is, certainly, the decision to launch the transformation of CICA into a full-fledged international organization. It also mapped out the principal directions of activity of our forum for the next two years. These include connectivity and transport and logistics infrastructure, financial cooperation, food security, sustainable development, environmental and climate change issues, youth cooperation, and volunteering.

At the Summit, the CICA Member States outlined their desire to find mutually beneficial points of convergence, focusing on a positive agenda and the implementation of joint projects. They also approved the joint Leaders’ Statement on Cooperation in the Field of Security of and in the Use of ICTs initiated by Russia and China.

The document notes the greatly expanded role of ICTs in all areas of human life, which is commensurate with the increased risks of misuse of the advances in ICTs for criminal and terrorist purposes. It underscores the willingness of the CICA countries to converge approaches to ensuring ICT security, develop cooperation in this area of the Conference based on universally recognized principles of international law, primarily the UN Charter. The document puts a focus on assisting developing CICA Member States in building information security capacity and bridging the digital divide to ensure the security and sustainability of the global information space.

It is significant that the Statement was developed as a follow-up to the implementation of confidence building measures in a new priority area – Security of and in the Use of ICTs, which is currently coordinated by Russia and China.

Thus, the upcoming seminar fits well into the vision of the CICA Member States to further ensure the practical impact of our forum, including meeting the demand of many countries to strengthen cross-platform coordination.

I am confident that the seminar participants will be able to share valuable experience and knowledge, shape further result-oriented cooperation in ICT security and combating cybercrime.

In closing, I would like to inform you that in 2023 CICA is planning to hold two field-specific events – a seminar on digital forensics and a conference on cybersecurity.

I wish all of us a productive work.

Thank you for your attention.

FOR CICA MEMBER STATES

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