The Scientific and Technical Centre of Export and Import of Special Technologies, Hardware, and Materials (STC) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization within the export control system in Ukraine. It was established in 1997 at the initiative of the Ministry of Industrial Policy of Ukraine, with the consent of the State Service of Export Control of Ukraine. Its mission is to assist actors of foreign economic activities (e.g. support or assistance from so called donor countries) in the practical implementation of export control-related legislative and regulatory documents and to create conditions for enterprises to efficiently carry out foreign economic activity.

STC’s activities include those in the following areas:

International activity

- studying and analyzing international experience in export controls, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and counter-terrorist activities;
- analyzing intergovernmental and proper Ukrainian problems related to export control and WMD non-proliferation;
- conducting international seminars and conferences.

Scientific and research

- scientific and research work related to export control and WMD nonproliferation;
- distribution of knowledge in the area of export control, familiarization of the public with non-proliferation problems and main international trends by publishing the "S&N" Journal;
- studying general development trends of national export control systems and generalizing international experience of cooperation between export control authorities of various countries;

Assistance to industrial enterprises

- developing export control internal compliance systems and commodity identification programmes; - rendering adequate assistance to enterprises concerning export control procedures and rules and conducting expert assessments of goods; - developing comments on the law of Ukraine “On State Control over International Transfers of Military Goods and Dual-Use Goods” and the relevant training Programme; - arranging seminars for industry personnel on changes in Ukrainian legislative and regulatory documents concerning export control.

STC pays major attention to cooperation with Ukrainian industrial enterprises. Every year, training and consultative seminars are held for enterprises of different business applications and industry representatives participate at international conferences. In that manner, STC helps them to focus their attention on international security problems, which, in turn, contributes to strengthening the State Export Control System.

STC investigates the needs of the enterprises through question forms to be answered by seminar participants. STC addresses the questioning results when new training courses and seminars are being developed, taking into account suggestions for training improvement, topical diversification, and greater involvement of international experts on the subject of international non-proliferation regimes.

Feedback

In order to improve STC’s communication with Ukrainian industrial enterprises, the Centre specialists have developed a few feedback options, specifically:
- Feedback section on STC’s website, where any visitor can pose any export control-related questions to Centre experts, who provide explanations and answers on the site;
- New column “Questions – Answers” in the Security and Non-proliferation Journal issued by the Centre on a bimonthly basis and distributed among governmental organizations, industrial enterprises and scientific institutions. Answers to the most relevant and essential questions received by the journal’s editorial team are published in this column.

One should note that this feedback between enterprises and STC promotes the effectiveness and strengthening of Ukrainian export control regime mechanisms, and facilitates their adherence to the EU standards. It was through information obtained by the Centre’s experts that the urgent need was detected to assist in export control and WMD non-proliferation training of experts from industrial enterprises.

Training course in export control and non-proliferation problems

With a view to assisting the government of Ukraine in raising the awareness of expert control and non-proliferation issues, STC initiated a project to develop a basic training course on export control and non-proliferation maters based on the comments to the law of Ukraine “On State Control over International Transfers of Military Goods and Dual-Use Goods” and Internal Compliance Programme.

The plans are to include the training Programme into the general education curriculum of the Ukrainian higher education institutions.

The training course was designed to retrain experts (60 hours) of industrial enterprises with the objective to raising their awareness in the area of export control of international transfers of military and dual-use goods, non-proliferation of WMD and their delivery means.

The intent of this course is not only to provide advanced training for experienced experts, but also to train future experts (+20 hours), i.e. students which eventually will be fully able to work for export control departments and services at enterprises. This would make the course more valuable in terms of its prospects.

STC’s plans for the future

The Scientific and Technical Centre of Export and Import of Special Technologies, Hardware, and Materials always strive to:
- identify promising ways of export control development;
- formulate the non-governmental opinion on the most relevant issues and evaluate them on the pages of its periodical;
- assist State authorities, enterprises and scientific institutions in strengthening the instruments and improving the mechanisms of security assurance, one of them being the export control.

Considering the national Ukrainian approach on foreign policy, i.e. to pursue European integration and hence to harmonize the Ukrainian national legislation with the European Union standards, one may claim that STC has been striving in that direction right from the beginning of its existence. By applying this strategy, STC would become a reliable partner and, have long-term and productive relationships with foreign governmental and non-governmental organizations. Such collaboration would be of overall benefit to Ukraine and can be exemplified by the cooperation with:
- the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate;
- Commonwealth Trading Partners Inc (contracted by the US Department of State and Department of Commerce);
- US DOE Argonne National Laboratory.


STC plans to continue its international cooperation with foreign and international organizations for the sake of information exchange. Ukraine is t a new and young democracy and there is a vast field of activity for its further democratization. The name of your organization is, therefore, welcome to appear on one of its vacant spots...

With best regards,
Oleksandr Siver
STC Director