US Calpers board backs Sudan investment resolution

SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 16 (Reuters) – The board of Calpers, the biggest U.S. pension fund, voted on Monday to support a resolution backed by California lawmakers to urge the state’s pension funds to protest human rights abuses in Sudan.

The resolution calls on Calpers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, and Calstrs, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, to urge companies in which they invest to avoid arrangements in Sudan that promote or allow human rights abuses in the African country.

The resolution is intended to send a message to leaders in Khartoum for failing to end violence in Sudan’s Darfur region. Some Sudanese armed militia have conducted a scorched-earth campaign against the region’s non-Arab farming villages.

“We need to speak out in an appropriate way,” said Calpers board member and California Controller Steve Westly. “We’re simply putting the spotlight of world attention on it.”

The resolution and Calpers’ endorsement are symbolic. The $186 billion pension fund has surveyed its 1,800 portfolio companies and found only a handful with indirect investments in Sudan.

The resolution backed by California’s Democrat-led Assembly echoes a campaign by the conservative Center for Security Policy to urge U.S. public pension funds to divest holdings in companies doing business in Sudan, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Iran.