On September 1, India blocked Azerbaijan’s bid to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), while China reiterated its support for Baku’s membership. According to local media, the Indian officials’ decision to block Azerbaijan’s accession contradicted the principles of multilateral diplomacy and the "Shanghai spirit," which stipulates that bilateral disputes should not be raised on multilateral platforms.

Regarding Azerbaijani media reports that Pakistan had blocked Yerevan’s SCO membership bid, the Armenian Foreign Ministry declined to comment. Ani Badalyan, the ministry's Spokesperson, stated, "We will not go into details of the process at this point, but I can say that we are seeing a fairly constructive approach and mutual understanding on the issue of Armenia's membership. With this perception, we will continue to work with interested SCO member states in the direction of further developing a mutually beneficial partnership with the organization."

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states announced in the Tianjin Declaration that they had decided to create a unified status called "SCO Partner." According to the declaration, the new category merged the previous "observer" and "dialogue partner" statuses into a single designation. The SCO, established in 2001, currently includes India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus as full members. Notably, before the change, Afghanistan and Mongolia held observer status, while the dialogue partners were Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Cambodia, Qatar, Kuwait, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Sri Lanka.