divestment

After the end of the Holocaust, the countries of the world swore “never again.” Together, they outlawed genocide by making it a binding duty of all countries to prevent and punish this crime, no matter where it happened, in order to “liberate mankind from such an odious scourge.”

Despite this pledge, genocide has occurred repeatedly since; in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda and, for several years now, the Darfur region of Sudan, where estimates range between 200,000 and 400,000 persons killed and approximately 2.5 million displaced from their homes. In 2004, for the first time in its history, the United States government officially deemed an ongoing systematic mass killing, that which has been transpiring in Darfur, as a “genocide.”

There has been broad, national bipartisan support in the U.S. for divestment as a strategy to help pressure the Sudanese government to end the killing. In 2007, Congress passed the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act, which authorizes state and local governments to divest assets in companies that conduct business operations in Sudan, and prohibits United States government contracts with such companies. This legislation passed the House of Representatives 411-0, and was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate. On Dec. 31, 2007, President Bush signed this act into law. So far, 24 states have passed divestment legislation of their own, and another 17 have legislation pending.

The Tennessee State Legislature is currently poised to consider divestment legislation. Senate Bill 3161, co-sponsored by Sens. Burchett, R-Knoxville, and Marrero, D-Memphis, and House Bill 2951 sponsored by Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga, would divest state funds from targeted companies who fund the ongoing genocide in Darfur through their business relationships with the Sudanese government. It is important to remember that divestment is the movement of investments, not the loss of investments. This means that investments are withdrawn from companies doing business in Sudan and re-invested in those who are not.

There are a number of reasons that divestment from Sudan is the right thing for Tennessee. First, states are not amoral entities. State business is routinely affected by moral concerns. This is clearly evident both in the social laws states regularly pass and in the provisions they offer for their elderly and needy citizens. It seems clear that there exists a fundamental moral duty that state funds should not be used to support companies whose business interests support a government that engages in open, massive and systematic killing, rape and displacement.

Second, evidence exists showing that divestment is not a money-losing proposition. Using data from Bloomberg, the Sudan Divestment Task Force finds that companies investing in Sudan underperformed their peer group by 51.63 percent over one year, 38.69 percent over three years and 4.73 percent over five years. And furthermore, while it is an improbable scenario, there is an escape clause in SB3161 that ceases divestment should state assets be shown to be losing more than .5 percent in value due to divestment.

Third, divestment works. It worked in helping bring an end to apartheid in South Africa, and it has recently softened Chinese resistance in the UN Security Council to a peacekeeping mission in Sudan, where China has extensive business and military interests. To the extent that it helps hasten an end to genocide, divestment increases the security of the United States. In the early ’90s, the U.S. government started what was known as the State Failure Task Force (now, the Political Instability Task Force), a group charged with understanding why states (countries) fall into extreme political instability and/or fail completely, such as happened in Somalia in the ’90s.

A genocide is a type of state failure. There are many reasons as to why the U.S. would be interested in state failure, but one is particularly acute in the post-9/11 world; failed and otherwise unstable states are easily exploitable environments for those wishing to use terror as a technique to harm the U.S., its allies and its interests. Afghanistan in the ’90s was a failed state.

You can do much to help end the genocide in Sudan by helping Sens. Burchett and Marrero and Rep. McCormick pass their divestment bills. First and foremost, e-mail, call and write your state senator and representative and tell them that you support divesting Tennessee from Sudan. Contact members of the Senate Finance Ways and Means and Pension and Insurance Committees as soon as you can and let them know that divestment from Sudan is the right thing for Tennessee. Tell your friends and colleagues to do the same. This is truly a simple thing to do for so much in return.

David L. Richards. Ph.D., is co-director of CIRI Human Rights Data Project and assistant professor of political science at the University of Memphis.