Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP / Getty Images
By: EFE
Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP / Getty Images
By: EFE
The United States wants to form an alliance with other countries to limit the export of technologies that governments can use authoritarians to monitor their population or restrict their human rights , a practice of which the White House accuses China.
US President, Joe Biden, will announce the initiative during the summit of democracy that the White House has organized for the 9th and the 10 December, and that will bring together dozens of leaders from 110 countries that the United States considers democratic, an official source explained to Efe.
“We will bring together a group of like-minded governments that will commit to working together” in that regard, said a senior US official, who requested anonymity, in an email.
Specifically, countries will cooperate “to determine how export control tools can help better monitor and, if appropriate, restrict the proliferation of such technologies, given their increasing use to abuse human rights
The alliance will be called “initiative for export control and human rights” and the official did not detail which countries will sign it, although the United States has been talking about the issue with European nations and with Japan, according to US media.
Once the initiative is launched, the countries will work to “develop and adopt a code of conduct or declaration of principles written and not binding, designed to guide the application of human rights criteria to export licensing practices and policies, ”explained the source.
The initiative will be “voluntary and informal” , but the idea is that its participants commit at some point to “strengthen their legal and regulatory frameworks” on the subject at the national level to correct “deficiencies in their export licensing regimes,” he added.
Countries are expected to also share more information on those technologies that they believe can be used to persecute or repress political dissidents, journalists, foreign diplomats or human rights activists in authoritarian countries.
The White House believes that China increasingly uses these technologies to “monitor and control its population,” said a second official, who requested anonymity , in statements to The Wall Street Journal.
The democracy summit will be the first of two meetings on this topic that Biden wants to convene with the stated goal of achieving a “democratic renewal” through the defense against authoritarianism, the fight against corruption or respect for human rights. China and Russia, who are not invited, have criticized the convening of that summit, and the Kremlin has described it as “an attempt to draw new dividing lines.”
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