US BIS: New ECCN 0A977 Export Controls on Water Cannon Systems for Riot or Crowd Control

Mechanism

This final rule (BIS, RIN 0694-AJ44, FR Doc 2020-21816, 85 FR 63009) created three new ECCNs on the Commerce Control List (CCL, Supplement No. 1 to Part 774 of the EAR):

All three ECCNs are controlled under the Crime Control (CC) column of the CCL. A Commerce Department export licence is required for shipments to all destinations not covered by the NATO/allied carve-out.

The regulatory justification invokes 15 CFR § 742.7 (Crime control and detection), which tasks BIS with reviewing exports that could enable governments to suppress civil society or commit human rights violations. Water cannons — vehicles with high-pressure water jets deployed for crowd dispersal — were added after advocacy from human rights groups and evidence of their use against political protesters in Belarus, Thailand, South Korea, and several African countries.

Context

This rule was published simultaneously with two related October 2020 BIS rulemakings:

• FR Doc 2020-22077 (Information Sharing for Judicial Review) — procedural rule on

classified-information submission in EAR enforcement proceedings

• FR Doc 2020-18334 (Wassenaar 2019 emerging-technology controls) — CCL amendments

flowing from the 2019 Wassenaar Arrangement Plenary

The water cannon rule is a unilateral US measure; it does not yet reflect a multilateral Wassenaar consensus. BIS indicated it would seek Wassenaar adoption of analogous controls.

Downstream implications

• Exporters and re-exporters of industrial water-management or fire-suppression vehicles

must now classify their products against ECCN 0A977 to determine if crowd-control capability brings them within scope.

• End-use and end-user certificates (EUC/EUU) will be required for covered shipments to

non-exempt destinations; anticipated review bias toward denial for authoritarian-government end-users.

• Likely chilling effect on European and Asian OEM re-exports of German/South Korean crowd-

control vehicles through US-content channel, even where origin is non-US.

Open questions

• Whether the EU and other Wassenaar members will adopt analogous CCL entries at a future

Plenary session.

• How BIS interprets "specially designed" for parts and components (e.g., high-pressure

pump assemblies with dual civilian fire-suppression use).