Wassenaar

Wassenaar Arrangement

http://www.wassenaar.org

Employees: 13
In Vienna since: 1996
Member states: 40

In 1996 the Secretariat of the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies began its activities in Vienna.

The Wassenaar Arrangement is named after the suburb in The Hague in which the founding document was negotiated in 1995. This made the Wassenaar Arrangement the successor organisation to COCOM, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Strategic Export Controls. The 39 current member states wish to contribute to increased security and stability at regional and international level through close cooperation in the area of export controls for conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies. This is the term used to designate products that have both civil uses and that can be used as arms. The primary objective of the Wassenaar Arrangement is, through the coordination of national export controls, to prevent sensitive goods, technologies and know-how from falling into the hands of states that could pursue military objectives with these weapons (non-proliferation). The main instruments of the Wassenaar Arrangement are lists of the relevant goods or substances and guidelines for export to non-member states.

Austria held the chairmanship of the Wassenaar Arrangement in 2005.

Tasks of the Wassenaar Arrangement:

• The promotion of transparency, responsibility and the exchange of information on the transfer of conventional arms and dual-use goods with the goal of preventing destabilisation
• Complementing and strengthening the existing treaties on non-proliferation of conventional arms and of dual-use goods and technologies
• The member states seek to ensure, through the domestic implementation of the agreements prepared on a consensus basis, that the transfer of arms and multi-use goods do not contribute to the build-up of military potential that would endanger international and regional security and stability