Sudan: Major U.S. Company Divests Over Rights Violations

5 January 2010
allAfrica.com
By Melissa Britz

A major American financial services company, TIAA-CREF, has divested from four Asian energy companies doing business with the Sudanese government due to concerns about human rights violations in the country.

The move comes after failed talks with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) of Delhi, an Indian public sector enterprise, and three Chinese companies, PetroChina Co Ltd, CNPC Hong Kong and Sinopec, about their Sudanese operations, according to a TIAA-CREF statement issued in New York on Monday.

"Our decision to sell shares in these companies culminated a three-year effort to encourage them to end their ties to Sudan or attempt to end suffering there," said Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., TIAA-CREF's chief executive.

However, TIAFF-CREF is retaining investments in a Malaysian government-owned company, PETRONAS. Ferguson said the company "has acknowledged our concerns and engaged in dialogue about how it might address them."

American activists have campaigned in recent years for a number of major U.S. investment companies to divest from companies doing business in Sudan. The Save Darfur Coalition alleges that up to 70 percent of the country's oil revenue is channeled to the military forces responsible for human rights violations in Darfur.

Conflict in Darfur led to the International Criminal Court (ICC) charging Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashi with war crimes and crimes against humanity in March 2009. According to the ICC's website "this is the first ever warrant of arrest ever issued for a sitting Head of State by the ICC."

An ICC statement attributes the charges to "crimes (that) were allegedly committed during a five-year counter-insurgency campaign by the Government of Sudan against the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and other armed groups opposing the Government of Sudan in Darfur."

TIAA-CREF features on Fortune magazine's list of the 100 top U.S. public- and privately-held corporations and specialises in providing financial services to non-profit organisations such as hospitals and universities.

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