The United States and the United Kingdom are hosting the 16th International Strategic Trade Controls and Border Security Conference in Edinburgh October 22-24, 2019. This conference brings together more than 200 export control and border security practitioners from 85 partner countries involved in dual-use and conventional arms policy, licensing, and enforcement to promote the development of effective strategic trade management and counter proliferation measures.
The Conference is organized under the auspices of the Export Control and Border Security (EXBS) Program, a technical capacity-building program at the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the U.S. Department of State. The EXBS Program provides substantive knowledge, skills, and tools to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), missile delivery systems, and advanced conventional weapons by helping to build effective strategic trade control and border security systems in countries that possess, produce, or supply strategic items, and in transshipment states.
With the number of chemical weapons attacks on the rise in recent years, this year’s conference aims to address the proliferation of chemical materials, technology, and equipment that may be used in the development of chemical weapons, missile propellants, nuclear reprocessing, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The conference will also highlight the importance of updating controls on unregulated chemical substances that may be deployed as targeted assassination tools. Participants will examine the challenges of targeting, identifying, inspecting, and interdicting illicit chemical shipments, including developing risk profiles for high-risk end-users.
The international community has a clear, compelling, and urgent responsibility to redouble our efforts to counter the proliferation and use of chemical weapons. The United States and the United Kingdom are firmly committed to advancing global stability and international security by encouraging international action to further tighten controls in order to impede illicit cross-border transfers of proliferation-sensitive goods and technologies, and working closely with our international partners to achieve this goal.
