On 1 November 2018, SCO Secretary General Rashid Alimov and SCO RATS Executive Committee Director Yevgeny Sysoyev had a meeting with the Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Gilles Carbonnier, on the sidelines of the international conference Combating Terrorism: Cooperation Without Borders, which is hosted by Tashkent.
The SCO Secretary General praised the activities of the ICRC as an independent, impartial and neutral organisation and congratulated the ICRC Vice-President on the success of the first session, which was specially held as part of the SCO RATS conference and dedicated to the basics of the international humanitarian law as applied to combating terrorism.
"This special session is a positive and successful beginning of the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding the SCO Secretariat and the ICRC signed on 9 June 2017 in Astana," Mr Alimov noted.
In his turn, Gilles Carbonnier said that "the SCO and the ICRC have many things in common, both in principles underlying cooperation and in formats of interaction," and expressed his hope to continue to look for common ground between the SCO and the ICRC.
The parties discussed the prospects for further implementation of their Memorandum of Understanding.
The meeting was held in a warm and constructive manner.
On 9 June 2017, the Memorandum of Understanding between the Secretariat of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was signed on the sidelines of the meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State in Astana. The document was signed by SCO Secretary General Rashid Alimov and ICRC Vice-President Christine Beerli.