COLLECTIVE SECURITY TREATY ORGANISATION

Recently, Kazakhstan’s President called on the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to help manage ongoing protests in the country.

Important points:

• It is an intergovernmental military alliance (six countries) that came into effect in 2002.
• It started storming into Kazakhstan to curb the protests which threatened the very existence of the regime that has ruled the Central Asian country since it became an independent republic in 1991.
• It is an intergovernmental military alliance that was signed on 15th May 1992.
• In 1992, six post-Soviet states belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States—Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—signed the Collective Security Treaty.
• This is also referred to as the “Tashkent Pact” or “Tashkent Treaty”.
• Three other post-Soviet states—Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Georgia—signed the next year and the treaty took effect in 1994.
• Five years later, six of the nine—all but Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan—agreed to renew the treaty for five more years, and in 2002 those six agreed to create the CSTO as a military alliance.
• The headquarters is located in the Russian capital of Moscow.
• Current members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan.
• To strengthen peace, international and regional security including cybersecurity and stability, the protection on a collective basis of the independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the member states.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT