nCa Report
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed a law ratifying the agreement between Kazakhstan’s government and the United Nations on the establishment of the UN Regional Centre for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Central Asia and Afghanistan, the presidential press service Akorda announced.
Tokayev also separately ratified a Memorandum of Understanding between the two parties regarding the centre’s operations.
The move, finalized this week, closes out the domestic legal process needed before the Almaty-based centre can begin functioning. It comes nearly a year after Kazakhstan and the UN signed a host country agreement establishing the centre’s legal basis, and roughly fifteen months after the UN General Assembly voted to create it in the first place.
A Long Road to Ratification
The idea dates back to September 2019, when Tokayev first proposed a regional SDG hub during his address to the UN General Assembly’s 74th session, suggesting it be housed in Almaty’s then-new Building of International Organizations. He raised the proposal again in 2022.
It gained formal UN backing on March 4, 2025, when the General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution establishing the centre, with 152 member states co-sponsoring the measure — a show of support Kazakh officials described as one of the country’s most significant foreign policy achievements in recent years.
Five months later, on August 3, 2025, Tokayev and UN Secretary-General António Guterres signed the host country agreement at a ceremony at UN Plaza in Almaty, alongside Kazakhstan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister and a senior UN under-secretary-general. Guterres described the signing as the start of a new chapter for the region’s development efforts, framing it as emblematic of deeper cooperation across Central Asia.
That August signing, however, was a diplomatic and legal milestone rather than an operational launch. The centre still needed its terms of reference finalized, its leadership appointed, and — crucially — ratification by Kazakhstan’s own parliament before it could begin work. That process moved through the Mazhilis and Senate this spring and culminated in Tokayev’s signature this week.
Not Yet Operational
Kazakh officials have been clear in recent weeks that the centre has not yet started its work program. Briefing the Senate on June 11, Deputy Foreign Minister Yerzhan Ashikbayev outlined the criteria the centre will use to select projects once it is running, describing a model built around regional initiatives shaped by the development priorities of each participating country, covering economic, social and environmental areas. Officials said the centre would be required to report annually on the projects it implements and on its finances.
Kazakhstan has committed to funding the centre’s operations through at least 2029, underscoring the multi-year horizon officials are working toward as the institution moves from paper to practice.
Mandate and Scope
Once operational, the centre will coordinate efforts across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, making it the first UN regional body dedicated solely to SDG coordination in the area. Its intended role spans linking governments, UN agencies, international financial institutions, the private sector, civil society and academia; aligning national priorities into joint regional action plans; and providing technical assistance, data and analytical support to participating governments.
Planned priority areas include climate and environmental cooperation — particularly transboundary water management amid concerns over glacier melt and the shrinking Aral and Caspian seas — along with regional economic integration, transport and trade connectivity for landlocked states, social inclusion measures targeting youth unemployment and gender gaps, and support for Afghanistan’s humanitarian needs, education and economic self-sufficiency within a stated framework of neutrality.
The centre is meant to complement, not duplicate, existing UN bodies in the region, including the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia, based in Ashgabat.
Broader Diplomatic Context
The ratification fits into a broader pattern of Kazakh-led regional initiatives over the past year. In April 2026, Kazakhstan hosted the Regional Ecological Summit in Astana in partnership with the UN, drawing roughly 1,500 participants and concluding with a joint declaration by Central Asian heads of state on environmental cooperation.
Kazakhstan has also continued to position itself as a venue for regional dialogue more broadly, including the long-running Astana Process talks.
For Tokayev, who has repeatedly framed Kazakhstan as a neutral connector between competing geopolitical blocs, the SDG centre represents one of several recent efforts — alongside the environmental summit and proposals for a UN-affiliated water body — to anchor multilateral institutions in Almaty and Astana ahead of the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, progress toward which the UN has acknowledged is lagging globally on poverty, hunger, inequality and climate measures.
What happens next will depend on how quickly the centre’s leadership is appointed and its terms of reference finalized — steps UN documentation has flagged as still outstanding even after this week’s ratification.
Kazakh officials have indicated project selection and reporting mechanisms are now being put in place, suggesting the centre’s first substantive activities are still ahead rather than already under way. /// nCa, 18 June 2026