On Wednesday in Astana, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) will mark its 20th anniversary ahead of a meeting of member states' foreign ministers.
The security-building initiative brings together 24 countries, accounting for over 90% of the territory of Asia and three billion people. This vast area stretches east-west from Turkey to South Korea and north-south from Russia to Thailand.
The idea of creating a regional platform for dialogue and consultation on security issues was proposed by President Nazarbayev in 1992 and reflects Kazakhstan's commitment to developing patterns of co-operation in Asia to manage the diverse security challenges facing the region.
These threats range from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to separatism, terrorism and extremism, disputes over water and energy resources as well as organized crime, illegal migration, the narcotics trade and others.
The situation in Afghanistan and its potential consequences for the wider region are the clearest reminder that these security problems are real and require coordinated approaches by countries in its neighborhood to be managed effectively.
While Asia has enormous human and natural resources that have made it a powerhouse of economic growth in recent decades, it is marked by stark contradictions: dynamic economic development is often accompanied by high levels of poverty, and countries that are committed to greater integration are, in some cases, caught up in protracted conflicts.
In short, this is a region that faces multiple sources of potential instability.
In Kazakhstan, we believe that it is essential to build security co-operation on the basis of trust. Dialogue and cooperation are tools to increasing mutual confidence. Without an inclusive approach based on "soft security", we fear that the region will struggle to manage the major security challenges facing it and will be unable to achieve its full economic potential.
CICA now has well established mechanisms for member states to discuss a wide range of issues related to economic and environmental security as well as broader military-political issues and new security threats, including human trafficking, money laundering and radicalization within societies.
Before CICA was born, Asia did not have mechanisms of this kind for broad security cooperation, unlike most other regions of the world. Kazakhstan's initiative was aimed at filling this gap and developing what President Nazarbayev termed a "common and indivisible security space on the Eurasian continent".
As a new country that emerged onto the global stage in 1991 as the world was undergoing a drastic re-ordering, Kazakhstan quickly recognized the importance of a stable and secure environment to develop successfully.
For the past 20 years, Kazakhstan has promoted CICA as a reliable and effective mechanism for preventive diplomacy across Asia. We were inspired by the vision behind the transformation of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe into an organization, the OSCE, and by its key role in bringing to the Cold War to a peaceful end and stabilizing Europe in the period that followed.
CICA started to take shape with the adoption of a number of founding documents, including the 1999 Declaration of Principles and the 2004 Catalogue of Confidence Building Measures. A secretariat was established in Almaty in 2006, and Kazakhstan spent its eight-year Chairmanship from 2002 to 2010 consolidating CICA's role and building partnerships with international and regional organizations. Turkey took over as Chair in 2010 and will remain in this role until 2014.
Over the past 10 years, CICA membership has grown from 16 to 24 countries, confirmation that its agenda remains relevant and its aspirations attractive.
We believe that the Conference is now ready to be upgraded to a fully-fledged international organization. This will enable it to strengthen its cooperation with other organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the League of Arab States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and others.
In the process, CICA can deepen its role as the only inclusive regional "soft security" organization and become a stronger and more effective player.
Twenty years on and now supported by 23 other countries, Kazakhstan remains committed to promoting CICA's development and embedding a culture of co-operative security in Asia.