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Concept
GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development
Summary
The GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development is a regional organization of four post-Soviet states: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova.
Conceived in 1997 to harmonize and integrate commercial, diplomatic and democratic relations among its member states, the GUAM treaty charter was signed in 2001 and today covers a population of over 57 million people. Uzbekistan was also a member of GUAM in the 1999–2005 period. In 2003, GUAM became an observer in the UN General Assembly. In 2007, GUAM also established a military peacekeeping force and organized joint military exercises. Such increasingly deepened integration and relationships led to GUAM playing an important role in the region's diplomatic and commercial affairs.
The agreement on a Free Trade Area was signed in 2002. In 2017, additional agreements on a free-trade area were announced, but the FTA has not been ratified and has not entered into force.
The official negotiating language of GUAM was Russian, but it was scrapped in favor of English in 2014.
Cooperation between Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova started with the "GUAM consultative forum", established on 10 October 1997, in Strasbourg and named after the initial letters of each of those countries. In 1999, the organisation adopted the name GUUAM due to the membership of Uzbekistan. A summit in Yalta on 6 and 7 June 2001 was accompanied by the signing of GUUAM's charter, which formalized the organization. According to the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the charter set objectives for cooperation, such as promoting democratic values, ensuring stable development, enhancing international and regional security, and stepping up European integration.
In 2002, Uzbekistan announced that it planned to withdraw from the organization and following this announcement started to ignore GUUAM summits and meetings. In May 2005, shortly after the Andijan massacre, Uzbekistan finally gave official notice of withdrawal from the organization to the Moldovan presidency, thus changing the group's name back to GUAM.
Official source
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