Shareholders for two Fidelity Investment mutual funds chose yesterday not to pass proposals that would prevent them from investing in companies that do business in Sudan. The Sudanese government is accused of committing various war crimes in relation to the conflict in Darfur. This past March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Human rights activists claim that by continuing to invest in countries such as Sudan, Western companies are in fact investing in genocide.
Corporations looking the other way when war crimes occur in the name of profit is nothing new. Several well known companies that are still around today did quite well in Nazi Germany. Some of them, like IBM and Siemens AG, became central to some of the worst acts of the Nazi regime. After numerous lawsuits were filed by Holocaust survivors and former prisoners of war against German companies for their use of slave labor and contributions to the Third Reich, Germany finally came to an agreement in 2000 to issue over $5 billion in compensation which would be paid equally by the German government and German companies such as DaimlerChrysler and Deutsche Bank. The massive payout so long after the fact would seem to serve as a warning for companies that choose to deal with criminal regimes, but apparently corporations today do not see it that way.
The Fidelity votes mirror similar votes on fourteen Fidelity funds that were taken last year. Similar results were recorded by shareholders on several Vanguard funds in July. Human rights activists have objected to Vanguard’s investments, which includes oil companies such as PetroChina Co. who pay oil royalties to the Sudan government. Such capital, claim human rights groups like Investors Against Genocide, fund the atrocities that have Sudan listed as one of the ‘worst of the worst’ in terms of human rights abusers.
It should be noted that millions of Fidelity and Vanguard shareholders voted in favor of divesting from Sudan. And despite the end result of these votes, other investment companies such as TIAA-CREF have adopted strict divestment policies regarding Sudan. But the fact that the divestment voting shareholders at Fidelity and Vanguard are still in the minority – roughly accounting for 7% to 20% of the total vote – demonstrates how far the human rights agenda has to go. After all, if people are not going to object to funding a genocidal government, then what human rights abuses will they object to when profits are at stake?
The problem, as David Weidner of the Wall Street Journal has pointed out, is that war and grave human rights abuse creates great opportunities for willing capitalists. Those who can stomach the company of these new friends stand to make a killing. But that killing can be counted in more than just profit; it’s the killing of human beings too. As the modern fate of Nazi-era companies has shown us, there may come a day when these companies will have to pay, but unfortunately it’s the people in Darfur and Southern Sudan who are paying the price for that profit today.
