The initiative to convene the CICA was first put forward on the 5th of October 1992 by the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, during the 47th session of the UN General Assembly. The main purpose of this initiative was to establish an effective and universal organisation for peace and security in Asia.
The main documents regulating the activities of the CICA, which has 27 members, are the Declaration on the Principles Guiding Relations between the CICA Member States adopted in 1999 and the Almaty Act adopted in 2002. The administrative body of the CICA is the Secretariat, located in Nur-Sultan. The main decision-making bodies of the Conference are a) the Meeting of Heads of State and Government (Summit – the supreme authority, convening every 4 years); b) the Meeting of Foreign Ministers (Ministerial Meeting - the body convening in accordance with the Rules of procedure every 2 years), and c) the Senior Officials Committee (SOC - the structure, holding meetings no less than once a year).
Azerbaijan was one of the first countries to support the initiative of the first President of Kazakhstan, His Excellency Nursultan Nazarbayev, to convene the CICA, and is currently actively participating in cooperation within the CICA. It acts as the coordinator of the confidence-building measure in the field of “Development of secure and effective systems of transportation corridors”. In this regard, the Azerbaijani side hosted a meeting of experts in Baku, on 20-21 April 2011. On 23 September 2021, Azerbaijan organized the next meeting of experts in virtual format on the topic of “Promoting cooperation in order to strengthen the digitalization in the transport and logistics operations”. The third conference of the Youth Council of CICA was held in Baku on the theme of “International Youth Cooperation in the context of Peace, Security and Sustainability”, on 13-14 April 2018.
The final declarations of the CICA Summits, as well as the documents of the Ministerial Meetings, have consistently condemned separatism as a threat to the stability, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, and stated that relationships among Member States should be based on respect for each other’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and internationally recognised borders.