Central Asian Cooperation Organization
organization
The Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO) (Russian: Центрально-Азиатское сотрудничество (ЦАС)) was a regional international organization uniting several former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It operated under this name from 2002 to 2005 and was dissolved following its merger with the Eurasian Economic Community.
History
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan formed the OCAC in 1991 as the Central Asian Commonwealth (CAC). On 30 April 1994, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan signed the Treaty on the Establishment of a Single Economic Space, laying the foundation for the Central Asian Union. In March 1998, Tajikistan joined the organization, which in July 1998 was reorganized into the Central Asian Economic Community (CAEC).
In June 2000, at a meeting in Dushanbe, the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, proposed completing work on an agreement to establish an International Water and Energy Consortium aimed at the rational joint use of water resources of transboundary rivers.
The Treaty establishing the Central Asian Cooperation Organization was signed on 28 February 2002 in Almaty. Four of the five Central Asian states—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—became founding members; Turkmenistan did not participate. CACO was formed through the transformation of the Central Asian Economic Community. Its declared objectives included cooperation in political, economic, scientific and technical, environmental, and cultural-humanitarian fields; mutual assistance in safeguarding the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of member states; the coordination of border and customs policies; and the gradual formation of a single economic space.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Central Asian Cooperation Organization” as organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2297670. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2005, 1991 and 1994.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Central Asian Cooperation Organization”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Central Asian Cooperation Organization primary sources, Central Asian Cooperation Organization archive and Central research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Central Asian Cooperation Organization”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Central Asian Cooperation Organization” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.