WASHINGTON Reuters - The White House will unveil a group of countries next week that pledge to work together to curb exports of technology that can be used by bad actors and repressive governments to violate human rights, senior administration officials said on Thursday.
The announcement, which will be made as part of the U.S. President Joe Biden's Summit for Democracy, aims to address the misuse of certain dual-use technologies that can lead to human rights abuses and to ensure critical and emerging technologies work for and not against democratic societies, officials told reporters in a briefing call.
The officials didn't say what countries would join the group, or the technologies or users targeted by it, but said members would develop and adopt a written code of conduct or statement of principles that guide the application of human rights criteria to export licensing policy. The officials singled out China as a nation that has misused technology to control its population.
After the coup, the Biden administration added Burmese entities to a trade blacklist for human rights abuses against Uigher Muslims. In October it released a rule to control the export of items used for malicious cyber activities.
The administration invited just over 100 government leaders to the virtual democracy event on December 9 and 10, the first of its kind, which is intended to help fight democratization backsliding and the erosion of rights and freedoms worldwide. China and Russia are not included in the list.