Private sector leads humanitarian effort in Sudan
Dec 22, 2005 (SANTA MONICA California) — Imagine if all the people lived their life as one…
Imagine you are in a country that keeps food and water from its people, shuts down roads to keep you from leaving and forces children to act as soldiers in a violent civil war.
Imagine you escape without anything but the clothes on your back; you begin to walk — away. Thousands of you just walk. Together, you end up in a different country, a country that doesn’t want you. So you’re placed in a refugee camp. In all, there are 560,000 of you.
That could have been you if you were born in Sudan. Today, these refugees (many of them famously known as “The Lost Boys”) are still in camps — years later. This month, for the first time, some of them are going back. But to what?
Sudan is still ensnared in scandal, corruption and violence. Its civil war is flaring again, threatening even more lives than the estimated 2 million already lost to genocide. Independent reports and estimates put the number of deaths in just the last two years at 220,000 — and rising at 10,000 per month. President Bush even admitted Sudan is the first genocide of the 21st century. UNICEF, in a new report released this week, says more than one million Sudanese children are living in an environment that exposes them to malnutrition, illness, violence and fear.
Nicholas Kristof, the intrepid New York Times correspondent there writes, “Last fall President Bush declared the slaughter here in Darfur to be genocide, and then looked away. One reason for his paralysis is apparently the fear that Darfur may be another black hole of murder and mutilation, a hopeless quagmire to suck in well-meaning Americans — another Somalia or Iraq. It’s not. We’re again making the same mistake we’ve made in past genocides: as in the slaughter of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Rwandans and Bosnians, we see no perfect solutions, so we end up doing very little. Because we could not change Nazi policies, we did not bother to bomb rail lines leading to death camps; today, because we have little leverage over Sudan, we do not impose a no-fly zone to stop the strafing of civilians or even bother to speak out forcefully.”
But the private sector is screaming into action.
CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the U.S., has begun a Sudan engagement initiative, saying it will divest of companies there “condoning the nation’s support for terrorism or the egregious human rights violations occurring in that country.” Last week it called on three major multinational firms — ABB Ltd, Alcatel and Siemens — to sever business ties to the Sudanese government, the Los Angeles Times reported. The pension fund owns about $355 million in shares of those companies, threatening to sell the investment if the companies didn’t comply.
The $200 billion fund said it would continue to monitor Royal Dutch Shell and Total for roles those companies play in Sudan, the newspaper said.
The pension fund, which often uses its investment clout in socially active ways, is lobbying other pension funds, investment managers and government agencies to report, engage and take action against companies with ties to violations in Sudan.
KLD Research & Analytics in Boston has launched a Sudan compliance service. Updated monthly, it identifies publicly traded companies conducting business in Sudan. More than 120 companies still do business or have links to Sudan, according to KLD.
The endowments of Harvard, Dartmouth and Stanford universities have already divested of companies with ties to Sudan, and many others are threatening to do the same. Some state pension funds are also promising to join the campaign.
The power to change lives in Sudan rests in divestment efforts like these.
Socially responsible investing was born out of the corporate divestment movement of the 1970s and 1980s in South Africa. Apartheid fell in 1993, and SRI has only grown stronger since. Its power shouldn’t be forgotten.
Bono, Bill and Melinda Gates were honored as Time magazine’s person of the year this year for their efforts to end poverty and strife in Africa. They were heralded as one.
We have an ethical responsibility here to be conscious — as one people.
Many of you are heading home for the holidays. Imagine, if it was for the first time in 21 years — the length of the civil war in Sudan. Your home is likely destroyed. There are few hospitals or schools. Where you lived, like most other places in the country, lacks good roads, running water and electricity.
Hope is pinned to a tenuous peace accord reached last January. The world, however, doesn’t seem to care all that much.
Imagine.
(MarketWatch)