In a recent column, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times — one of the leading voices on the crisis in Darfur — urged his readers to find out whether their investments are “helping finance the janjaweed militias that throw babies into bonfires in Darfur and Chad.”

 

Although he generally believes that economic sanctions can be counterproductive, Kristof argued that “Sudan is an exception, a rare instance where narrowly focused divestment makes practical as well as moral sense.... In this case, the cost of divestment to fund managers or investors is negligible, and there is a real prospect that the strategy will add enough attention, embarrassment and pressure that Sudan will stop slaughtering Darfuris — just as it has stopped massacring people in southern Sudan.”

 

We agree.

 

As Nicholas Kristof points out, the Sudanese government is eager for foreign investment.  It has even sponsored a special advertising section in Kristof’s own New York Times, extolling Sudan as a safe and peaceful location for direct investment. The government — and particularly its military budget, which finances the genocide — depends upon oil revenues.

 

When multinational corporations — including oil companies and other foreign companies whose infrastructure investments make oil extraction easier and more profitable — fund the Sudanese government, people die in Darfur.

 

But when investors ask companies about their Sudan operations, it puts the issue on the table, compelling them to calculate whether those operations are worth the moral hazard, the bad publicity, the distraction, and the potential for a reduced investor pool and a lower share price. When investors tell companies that there is a price for complicity in genocide, some of those companies change their conduct. And when corporate behavior changes, especially when it affects oil revenues, the Sudanese government can begin to feel pressure to cease its abuses.

 

This is why social investors apply standards to their investment decisions, examine corporate conduct, ask companies hard questions, and engage in shareholder activism — on human rights and on a wide range of other important social and environmental issues.

 

In 2005, we quoted the late Senator Paul Simon, who decried the lack of public outcry in response to an earlier genocide: “If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different.” In Rwanda, the world did too little, too late.

 

As many of you wrote to our political leaders in response to Domini’s 2005 Action Alert on Darfur, genocide cannot be tolerated by a civilized society. We must not make the same mistake in Sudan that we did in Rwanda.

 

Investors have a special role to play in addressing this crisis. We have an obligation to use all of the tools at our disposal to ensure that we help to bring it to an end as quickly as possible.

 

 

 

You should consider the Domini Funds' investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing. View or order a copy of the Funds' current prospectus for more complete information on these and other topics. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing or sending money.

 

DSIL Investment Services LLC, Distributor. 02/07