Welcome to the TIAA-CREF Divestment Campaign!We seek to pressure TIAA-CREF, the nation's largest private pension fund, to divest from international corporations supporting genocide in the Sudan: ABB Ltd., PetroChina, Siemens AG, Alstom, Lundin Petroleum, Total SA, and Sinopec. If you hold a pension plan or investments in TIAA-CREF, please add your voice to demand that they respond to one of the most urgent and horrific crises of our time. Join professors, teachers, and investors across the nation in faxing or mailing a letter directly to TIAA-CREF, requesting divestment. Please contact Amos Irwin with questions or comments, or to increase your impact by calling TIAA-CREF executives. Background on Sudan Genocide
Despite the genocide and the world's highest foreign debt, the Sudanese economy, supported heavily by direct foreign investment, has blossomed over the past several years. Economic gains have disproportionately benefited Khartoum's elite and the Sudanese military. For example, the Sudanese government has consistently ensured that oil and military operations have access to electricity and telecommunications, while neglecting to provide access to the vast majority of its population. Reports have even noted the government's tendency to shut down cell phone systems shortly before militia attacks in Darfur, denying villagers the ability to warn each other. Why Divestment?As political, diplomatic, and military efforts to halt the genocide continue to fail and humanitarian aid efforts are actively resisted by the regime, divestment provides a solution many see as essential to forcing the dictators to end the killings. Divestment was instrumental in toppling the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1980s, and analysts are increasingly lauding its potential for improving the situation in Darfur. The conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation notes: "Unless massive international pressure is mobilized to threaten what the [Khartoum] regime values most — its ability to maintain itself in power and its vested economic interests, particularly its fledgling oil industry — then the... regime will continue to hinder humanitarian aid efforts, cover up the atrocities of its militia surrogates, and crush resistance through the deliberate starvation and expulsion of non-Arab groups... Americans should join a populist divestment campaign to persuade large institutional investors to ban investments in publicly traded companies that do business in Sudan." Heeding the call of conservatives and liberals alike, numerous U.S. states and institutions have turned towards divestment as a tool for altering Sudan's behavior. Current Divestment CampaignsThe states of New Jersey, Illinois, and Oregon have all approved divestment plans and there is pending divestment legislation in Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Indiana, Texas, and Vermont. Several states, including Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, have passed or are considering rules requiring regular reports on how state funds are linked to terrorist states, including Sudan (which hosted Osama bin Laden for much of the 1990s). Many of these states have left open the option to subsequent divestment. Finally, some states, including California, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Rhode Island, have active divestment movements with varying levels of involvement from state officials. At the university level, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Amherst have all enacted restrictions on Sudan investments. Additionally, there are emerging or active Sudan divestment campaigns at the following institutions, although this is by no means a comprehensive list: Brandeis, Brown, Cal State Chico, Columbia, Emory, Georgetown, George Washington, Cal State Chico, Swarthmore, Trinity, University of Alabama, University of Maryland, University of Mary Washington, University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale. TIAA-CREF and Socially Responsible InvestmentTIAA-CREF advocates investing in companies held to certain moral standards, while supporting genocide certainly crosses any moral threshold for action. Specifically, their Policy Statement on Corporate Governance includes: “Commitment to corporate social responsibility,” which means that, “In particular,” the corporations TIAA-CREF invests in should “ensure that [their] actions do not negatively affect the common good of the corporation’s communities.” Companies supporting genocide in the Sudan clearly have a negative effect upon their Sudanese communities, in violation of TIAA-CREF's policy. TIAA-CREF claims to engage in private dialogue with companies to ensure cooperation with their policies, but these companies refuse to respond to, discuss, or rethink their actions supporting genocide. So TIAA-CREF must remove its investments from these immoral and recalcitrant companies. TIAA-CREF and Sudan DivestmentSix years ago, TIAA-CREF sold all its shares of Talisman Energy, a Canadian oil company that provided the Sudanese government with revenue used to buy arms in its war against the South, as well as displacing and killing civilians for access to oil fields. After TIAA-CREF and major public pension funds pulled out of Talisman, the company's share price dropped 35% and it quickly left the Sudan. TIAA-CREF's sale of all Talisman holdings, due to pressure from many activists culminating in a protest and rally outside their Boston offices, was instrumental in demonstrating that the Sudanese regime could not maintain its genocidal policies in the face of responsible investors. We are calling on TIAA-CREF to again lead investors in pulling out of corporations willing to ignore and abet genocide if it leads to more profits. Company List and ProfilesABB Ltd. | PetroChina | Siemens AG | Sinopec | Alstom | Lundin Petroleum | Total SA These oil and energy companies supply the Sudanese regime with revenue and technology necessary to carry out the systematic killings and destruction, while refusing to address what the government is doing and how they are helping them do it. The regime uses 80% of its oil revenue to buy weapons, according to Sudan's former transportation minister Akol, while the percentage benefiting the Sudanese populace is negligible. Numerous reports from refugees and defecting soldiers confirm that many of the helicopters used to carry out the genocide are based at airstrips maintained by oil companies. Energy companies provide infrastructure allowing the regime to maximize their oil profits and even to efficiently carry out mass killings and destruction in Darfur. The Sudanese government is extremely dependent upon the economic support these companies provide by taking on numerous, multi-million dollar projects that mostly benefit the Sudanese elite and armed forces. ABB Ltd. (2.7 million shares, $20 million)
Alstom (3 million shares, $150 million) |
Since early 2003, Sudanese troops and government-sponsored militias
have carried out the coordinated and targeted killilng of the black
African population in Sudan's Darfur region. For the first time in
history, the U.S. Congress, State Department, and Executive Branch
have all declared that an ongoing massacre amounts to genocide and
that the Sudanese government is directly responsible. To date,
400,000 people have been slaughtered, 2.5 million more have been
driven from their homes, and 70% of all Darfurian villages have been
destroyed. Furthermore, a systematic policy of rape has maimed and
humiliated scores of Darfuri women, while the government's blockade
of humanitarian aid to the displaced has left over 3 million people in
danger of starvation. 
ABB Ltd. has a contract to build a major process automation system expansion for the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company's Sudanese oil fields. Its operations enhance the bidding prices for oil concessions and in the percentage return to the Sudanese government in extracted oil, providing the regime with substantial added revenue. ABB is also providing for power transmission from Sudan's Merowe Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa, to Khartoum, Port Sudan, and resorts along the Nile. These operations increase the government's oil revenue, of which 80% is used to buy weapons, according to Sudan's former transportation minister. ABB supports the government by taking on massive projects that provide revenue and services for Khartoum's elite without supplying economic aid to the remainder of the country, while continuing to ignore the genocide in Darfur.