On December 10, 2021, the White House released a Fact Sheet regarding its new Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative (“the Initiative”), announced in a Joint Statement with Australia, Denmark, and Norway. Although not signatories, Canada, France, and the Netherlands expressed formal support for the Initiative. According to the Joint Statement, over the next year, signatory countries will work together to establish a voluntary, non-binding written code of conduct “around which like-minded states could politically pledge to use export controls” to combat the use of technology in enabling human rights abuses. The signatories will consult with industry and academia over the next 12 months in developing this principals.

For the past several years, the United States has advocated for greater cooperation among allies on export controls, as part of a broader China and national security strategy. Launched as part of the Summit for Democracy, the Joint Statement stresses the risks associated with the abuse of advanced technologies on human rights and democratic values. The Initiative follows multiple actions taken by the Administration over the past year on this subject, including the Administration’s decision to add new parties to the Entity List. The Fact Sheet provides a broad, but holistic, overview of those actions, to date, on export controls and human rights. These measures, along with more information about the initiative, are summarized below.

According to the Fact Sheet, the Initiative aims to combat the use of technologies for human rights abuses, including stifling dissent, harassing human rights defenders, chilling free expression, or interfering unlawfully with privacy. The initiative will work toward this goal by:

• Developing a written code of conduct intended to guide the application of human rights criteria to export licensing policy and practice.

• Building policy alignment with likeminded partners to foster common action.

• Consulting technical experts and export control and human rights practitioners when developing policy in order to ensure that critical and developing technologies work for, and not against, democratic societies.

• Collaborating with partners during the Summit for Democracy’s “Year of Action” to strengthen domestic legal frameworks, and coordinate with other governments, industry, and academia to continue to shape the Initiative.

The Fact Sheet also notes the Biden Administration’s current efforts to reinforce democratic values in key emerging technology areas by working with allies, including:

• Launching a Statement of Principles on Technology with Quad leaders (Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan), as well as cooperating on other important technology issues like semi-conductor supply chains.

• Articulating shared principles and areas for export control cooperation with the European Union, including developing convergent control approaches on sensitive dual-use technologies and instituting a working group to address the misuse of technology to threaten human rights.

• Partnering with both Japan and the Republic of Korea regarding critical and emerging technologies.

The Fact Sheet notes that the Initiative comes in the wake of actions taken by the Administration throughout the year to combat the misuse of technology to abuse human rights, including:

• Preventing entities located in China that have been enabling human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Region from obtaining U.S. technology by adding them to the Commerce Department’s Entity List.

• Adding companies and ministries controlled by the Burmese military to the Entity List following the military coup.

• Publishing an Interim Final Rule establishing export controls on certain cybersecurity items that could be used for malicious cyber activities, including adding new ECCNs and establishing a new License Exception ACE.

• Adding four foreign companies to the Entity List, including NSO Group and Candiru of Israel for developing and supplying spyware to foreign governments used for unlawful surveillance, as well as Russia’s Positive Technologies and Singapore’s Computer Security Initiative Consultancy PTE for misusing and trafficking technology that was used to gain unauthorized access to information systems in ways that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy of the United States.