Wassenaar Arrangement |ForumIAS

News: The Wassenaar Arrangement faces calls for reform, as its focus on physical exports leaves cloud services and digital data flows in grey areas despite adding controls on “intrusion software.”

About Wassenaar Arrangement

Source: Financial express

About	It is a key international voluntary regime for controlling exports of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies.
Aim	To prevent the acquisition of conventional arms, dual-use goods and technologies by terrorists.
Formed in	It was formed in 1996 as the successor to the Cold War-era Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM).
Secretariat	Vienna (Austria)
Participants	It currently has 42 participating members. India joined it on 8 December 2017.
WA Control Lists	The Wassenaar Arrangement has two main lists: the Dual-Use List and the Munitions List. Dual-use items are those items that have both commercial and military or proliferation applications. For Dual-Use items, members exchange information on denied export licenses to non-members. For the Munitions List, members annually share data on exports of conventional weapons to non-members, covering eight related categories.
Functioning Body	The Wassenaar Arrangement Plenary is the main decision-making body. It consists of representatives from all Participating States, and they meet once a year, usually in December. The Plenary Chair rotates annually among member states. All decisions are made by consensus.

Other Export Control Regimes

About Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG):

NSG is a group of nuclear supplier countries that frames and implements agreed rules for exporting nuclear equipment with a view to controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.
Setup in: It was set up as a response to India’s nuclear tests conducted in 1974.
Aim: To ensure that nuclear trade for peaceful purposes does not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Members: The NSG has 48 member states and the European Commission acts as an Observer.

About Australia Group

The Australia Group is an informal forum that helps exporting and transshipping countries reduce the risk of aiding chemical and biological weapons (CBW) proliferation.
It meets annually to improve national export licensing measures.
It imposes no legally binding obligations.
All participants are parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).
Members: The Australia Group now has 43 members, comprising all OECD countries, European Commission, all 27 EU member states as well as Ukraine and Argentina.
- India has been a member of it since 2018.

About Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)

It is a multilateral export control regime to control the spread of missiles and missile technology that is capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction(WMDs).
It was formed in 1987 and it has 35 member countries.
- India is part of it since June, 2016.
Objective: To restrict the transfer of missile technology that can be used for the delivery of WMDs.
It seeks to prevent the spread of missiles and their related technology that can carry payloads beyond a certain range.
The MTCR operates on the basis of voluntary adherence.