Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
Содружество Независимых Государств (СНГ)
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![]() Member state Associate member State announced intent to leave CIS Participant in some projects
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Headquarters | ![]() |
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Working language | Russian | |||
Type | Commonwealth | |||
Membership | 9 member states 1 associate member 1 participant |
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Leaders | ||||
- | Executive Secretary | ![]() |
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Establishment | 21 December 1991 | |||
Population | ||||
- | 2008 estimate | 277,983,490 | ||
Website cis.minsk.by |
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (Russian: Содружество Независимых Государств (СНГ), transliterated Sodruzhestvo Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv (SNG)) is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics.
The CIS is not a superstate, and it is comparable to a loose confederation similar to the original European Community rather than today’s European Union. Although the CIS has few supranational powers, it is more than a purely symbolic organization, possessing coordinating powers in the realm of trade, finance, lawmaking, and security. It has also promoted cooperation on democratization and cross-border crime prevention. As a regional organization, CIS participates in UN peacekeeping forces.[1]
There is disagreement among CIS countries about whether to deepen their own relationship as a separate bloc, or whether to seek greater ties with Western Europe and the United States, particularly in the areas of economics and defense. Some of the members of the CIS have established the Eurasian Economic Community with the aim of creating a full-fledged free trade zone or economic union between the participating states. However, other member states have shown greater interest in seeking to join the European Union. Similarly, some member states have established the Collective Security Treaty Organization to co-operate on defense and security issues, while other members are seeking full membership of NATO. This disagreement has hindered the development of the CIS.
The CIS is headquartered in Minsk, Belarus. The chairman of the CIS is known as the Executive Secretary. All of the CIS's executive secretaries have been from Belarus or Russia. Sergei Lebedev is the current executive secretary, and has been since October 2007.
Contents |
Country | Creation Agreement signed[2][3] |
Creation Agreement ratified[4] |
CIS Charter ratified[4] |
Comments |
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21 December 1991 | 18 February 1992 | 16 March 1994 | |
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21 December 1991 | 24 September 1993 | 14 December 1993 | |
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8 December 1991 | 10 December 1991 | 18 January 1994 | Founding member country |
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— | 3 December 1993 | 19 April 1994 | Notice of withdrawal from CIS served on 18 August 2008;[5] becomes effective on 17 August 2009[6] (CIS Charter,[7] sec. 1, art. 9) |
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21 December 1991 | 23 December 1991 | 20 April 1994 | |
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21 December 1991 | 6 March 1992 | 12 April 1994 | |
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21 December 1991 | 8 April 1994 | 27 June 1994 | |
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8 December 1991 | 12 December 1991 | 20 July 1993 | Founding member country |
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21 December 1991 | 26 June 1993 | 4 August 1993 | |
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21 December 1991 | 26 December 1991 | Not ratified | Associate member as of 26 August 2005[8][9] |
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8 December 1991 | 10 December 1991 | Not ratified | Founding participant country |
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21 December 1991 | 1 April 1992 | 9 February 1994 |
Thus, as of September 2008, the 12 countries that form the CIS differ in their membership status: 9 countries have ratified the CIS charter and are full CIS members, one country (Turkmenistan) is an associate member, one country (Georgia) has declared its decision to leave the CIS, and one country (Ukraine) is a founding and participating country, but legally not a member country.
The organization was founded on 8 December 1991 by Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, when the leaders of the three countries met in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Natural Reserve, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Brest in Belarus and signed a Creation Agreement (Russian: Соглашение, Soglasheniye) on the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of CIS as a successor entity to the USSR.[2] At the same time they announced that the new alliance would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as other nations sharing the same goals. The CIS charter stated that all the members were sovereign and independent nations and thereby effectively abolished the Soviet Union.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev described this as an "illegal and dangerous" constitutional coup, but it soon became clear that the development could not be stopped. On 21 December 1991, the leaders of eight additional former Soviet Republics – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – joined the CIS, thus bringing the number of participating countries to 11.[3] Georgia joined two years later, in December 1993.[4] As of that time, CIS included 12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics. The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – had decided not to join, seeking strategic affiliation with the European Union.
The Creation Agreement remained the main constituent document of the CIS until January 1993, when the CIS Charter (Russian: Устав, Ustav) was adopted.[7] The charter formalized the concept of membership: a member country is defined as a country that ratifies the CIS Charter (sec. 2, art. 7). Ukraine, one of the three founding countries that signed and ratified the Creation Agreement in December 1991, has never ratified the CIS Charter and it is thus legally not a member country to this day.[4] Turkmenistan changed its CIS standing to associate member as of 26 August 2005 in order to be consistent with its UN-recognized international neutrality status.[8][9] Georgia notified (on 18 August 2008) the CIS executive organs of the unanimous decision of its parliament to leave the regional organization,[10][5] and according to the CIS Charter (sec. 1, art. 9) this decision will come into force 12 months after the notification date.
During the 1992 Olympic Games (in Albertville and Barcelona), athletes from the CIS member states competed as the Unified Team for the last time. In other sports events in that year, such as the European Championships in football, athletes took part as representatives of the CIS. Since then, the member states have competed under their national banners.
Between years of 2003 and 2005, three CIS member states experienced a change of government in a series of "colour revolutions": Eduard Shevardnadze was overthrown in Georgia, Viktor Yushchenko was elected in Ukraine, and, lastly, Askar Akayev was toppled in Kyrgyzstan. The new government in Ukraine has taken an especially clear pro-Western stance, in contrast to their predecessors' close relationship with the Kremlin. The new government of Georgia has likewise taken a pro-Western and anti-Kremlin stance. Moldova also seems to be quietly drifting toward the West, away from the CIS.
In that time frame a number of statements have been made by member state officials, casting doubt on the potential and continued worth of the CIS:
The affairs of CIS member states are governed by the following statutory bodies:
Established as the CIS Joint Armed Forces High Command in March 1992 and then reorganized as the Coordinating Staff in August 1993. Reduced quickly to a very weak body as national authorities asserted their control over their own armed forces. May now have been wound up after a CIS conference in Kazan in August 2005.[22]
The following bodies also govern defense and security issues:
On October 7, 2002, the Presidents of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, signed a charter in Chişinău, founding the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) (Russian: Организация Договора о Коллективной Безопасности (ОДКБ~ODKB)) or simply Ташкентский договор (The Tashkent Treaty). Nikolai Bordyuzha was appointed secretary general of the new organization. On 23 June 2006, Uzbekistan became a full participant of the CSTO and its parliament formally ratified membership on 28 March 2008.[23] The CSTO is an observer organization at the United Nations General Assembly.The charter reaffirmed the desire of all participating states to abstain from the use or threat of force. Signatories would not be able to join other military alliances or other groups of states, while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all.
The CSTO employs a "rotating presidency" system in which the country leading the CSTO alternates every year. Currently Armenia has the CSTO presidency.
The CSTO grew out of the 1992 CIS Collective Security Treaty (CST) which was signed on 15 May 1992, by Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in the city of Tashkent.
Of the CIS members not in the CSTO, both Ukraine and Georgia are seeking membership of NATO, while Moldova, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are militarily neutral.
In addition to the Economic Council, the following agencies are involved in economic issues.
Mongolia participates as an observer in а number of economic activities of the CIS.[24]
The Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC or EAEC or EEC) was put into motion on 10 October 2000 when Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan signed the treaty. EurAsEC was formally created when the treaty was finally ratified by all five member states in May 2001. Uzbekistan became a member in January 2006[1] when the Central Asian Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Community merged. Moldova and Armenia have observer status.
The aims of EurAsEC include:
The Institutional framework of EurAsEC includes:
After discussion about the creation of a "Common Economic Space" between the countries of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, agreement in principle about the creation of this space was announced after a meeting in Moscow suburb on 23 February 2003. The Common Economic Space would involve a supranational commission on trade and tariffs that would be based in Kiev, would initially be headed by a representative of Kazakhstan, and would not be subordinate to the governments of the four nations. The ultimate goal would be a regional organization that would be open for other countries to join as well, and could eventually lead even to a single currency.[25]
However, since the election of Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukrainian presidential election of 2004 Ukraine has shown renewed interest in membership of the European Union, and such membership would be incompatible with the envisioned common economic space. Nevertheless, with the revival of the Eurasian Economic Community in 2005 there is a possibility for the "common economic space" agenda to be implemented in its framework of a Union of Russia and Belarus with or without the participation of Ukraine. This was confirmed in August 2006 [2] and in October 2007 it was announced that a customs union would be formed by Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan by 2011 with other members being able to join later. [3]
Of the CIS members that are not in EurAsEc, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia are all actively seeking membership of the European Union, while both Armenia and Azerbaijan have expressed interest in seeking EU membership at some stage in the future.
Since 2002, the CIS has been sending observers to elections in member countries of the CIS. Several of these observation missions have been extremely controversial, as their findings have been that the elections are "free and fair" only when the pro-Kremlin or ruling-party wins, and therefore has often been in contradiction with the findings of other international organizations from Western liberal-democracies - such as the OSCE, the Council of Europe, or the European Union - which normally label those same elections as having many irregularities.
After the CIS observer mission disputed the final (repeat) round of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election which followed the Orange Revolution and brought into power the former opposition, Ukraine suspended its membership in the CIS observer missions.
Russia has been urging for the Russian language to receive official status in all of the CIS member states. So far Russian is an official language in four of these states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Russian is also considered an official language in the region of Transnistria, as well as the semi-autonomous region of Gagauzia in Moldova.
Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-supported presidential candidate in the controversial Ukrainian presidential election, 2004, declared his intention to make Russian an official second language of Ukraine. However, Viktor Yushchenko, the winner, did not do so as he was more closely aligned with the Ukrainian-speaking population.
Members | ||
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Name | Country | Term |
Ivan Korotchenya | ![]() |
26 December 1991 - 29 April 1998 |
Boris Berezovsky | ![]() |
29 April 1998 - 4 March 1999 |
Ivan Korotchenya (acting) | ![]() |
4 March - 2 April 1999 |
Yury Yarov | ![]() |
2 April 1999 - 14 June 2004 |
Vladimir Rushailo | ![]() |
14 June 2004 - 5 October 2007 |
Sergei Lebedev | ![]() |
since 5 October 2007 |
As the CIS doesn't meet all members' expectations, several alternative organizations involving the former Soviet republics have been created:
There are also organizations which consist of unrecognized states:
In several other organizations the former Soviet republics constitute a large part of members:
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