The US Government Forms Technological Cooperation Against Human Rights Violations, Russia And China Are Not Included

US President Joe Biden will lead the anti-human rights technology treaty group. (photo: twitter @potus)

JAKARTA - Next week, the White House will unveil a group of countries that have pledged to work together to curb exports of technology that could be used by bad actors and repressive governments to violate human rights. This was confirmed by a senior US government official, Thursday, December 2.

The announcement, to be made as part of US President Joe Biden's Democracy Summit, is aimed at addressing "the misuse of certain dual-use technologies that can lead to human rights abuses" and ensuring "essential and emerging technologies, function for and do not oppose democratic societies." ," the officials told reporters in a brief statement.

Officials declined to say which countries would join the group or the technologies or users targeted by it. But they said that members would develop and adopt a “non-binding written code of conduct or statement of principles intended to guide the application of human rights criteria for export licensing policies.”

Officials singled out China as an example of a country that has abused technology to control its population.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration added a Chinese company to a trade blacklist for enabling human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslim group and also added entities in Myanmar after the coup took place there. In October, it released rules to control exports of goods used for malicious cyber activity.

The US government also invited more than 100 government leaders to the virtual Democracy event on December 9 and 10, the first of its kind, which aims to help stop democratic decline and the erosion of rights and freedoms around the world. The list does not include China or Russia.