On 12 May 2017, SCO Deputy Secretary-General Aziz Nosirov met with Li Yuwei, Chief of the Transport Division of the ESCAP Secretariat, at the SCO Secretariat in Beijing, China.
Mr Nosirov congratulated Mr Li on the 70th anniversary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and informed him that the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Facilitation of International Road Transport, which was drafted with assistance from ESCAP Secretariat experts and signed in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on 12 September 2014, had come into force.
The parties exchanged opinions on a roundtable the SCO Secretariat and the ESCAP Secretariat will hold in Beijing on 5-6 July 2017 to discuss the implementation of the road facilitation agreement and its influence on the regional connectivity, as well as prospects for strengthening ties between the secretariats. The SCO official confirmed the participation of an SCO Secretariat delegation in the 73rd ESCAP Session in Bangkok on 18-19 May 2017. He also invited an ESCAP Secretariat delegation to the constituent meeting of the Joint Commission on the Implementation of the Agreement, which is scheduled to be held at the SCO Secretariat on 23-24 May 2017.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) is the largest of the UN's five regional commissions. It was set up to deal with economic and social problems of the Asia-Pacific region. In 2008, ESCAP established partner relations with the SCO. They are based on three-year memorandums of understanding between the two organisations' secretariats. The latest memorandum was signed during a meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government (Prime Ministers) held in Zhengzhou, China, on 15 December 2015.