The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is an international organization founded in 1991 that does not have supranational powers. The CIS members include 11 of the 15 emerging union republics of the USSR.
Instructions
Step 1
The reason for the appearance of this organization in the international legal field is the collapse of the USSR and the formation in its space of 15 new sovereign states, closely related in the political, economic, humanitarian spheres, due to the existence of centuries within the framework of one country. The deep integration of the republics predetermined the objective interest of the new subjects of international law in cooperation in various fields of economy, politics, culture on the basis of equal cooperation and respect for each other's sovereignty.
The CIS was founded on December 8, 1991, when the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the so-called. The "Belovezhskaya Agreement", the text of which stated the abolition of the Soviet Union and the formation on its basis of a new form of interstate cooperation of the former Soviet republics. This document was called the "Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States", and by 1994 it was ratified and entered into the CIS by 8 more states - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Step 2
On December 21, 1991, the heads of 11 former Soviet republics at the Alma-Ata summit signed a declaration on the goals and principles of the CIS and a protocol to an agreement on the creation of the CIS. In 1993, Minsk adopted the CIS Charter, the main normative legal document of the organization governing its activities. According to Art. 7. of this Charter, the CIS member states are subdivided into the founding states and the member states of the Commonwealth. The founders of the CIS are the countries that have ratified the agreement on its creation of December 8, 1991 and the protocol to the agreement of December 21, 1991. The member states of the CIS are those of its founders who have assumed the obligations of the charter. The Charter was ratified by 10 out of 12 CIS members, with the exception of Ukraine and Turkmenistan.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania refused to participate in the CIS from the very beginning, choosing the European vector of integration. Ukraine, being one of the co-founders and a member of the CIS, refused to ratify the charter of the CIS, and is not legally a member of the commonwealth. In 2009, under the influence of events in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia withdrew from membership in the CIS.
Thus, as of 2014, 11 states are members of the CIS: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. All of the above states are members of the CIS, except for Turkmenistan and Ukraine.
