MITs Divestment from Sudan

Petition for MITs Divestment from Sudan


WHEREAS

(1) The government of Sudan has engaged in a policy of genocide against its own non-Arab population in Darfur through use of its military and through sponsorship of attacks by armed militias known as the janjaweed;

(2) The Sudanese government is responsible for the death of 400,000 Darfurians and displacement of 2.5 million more1;

(3) The U.S. State Department and both chambers of Congress have declared that the Sudanese regime of dictator Omar al-Bashir is committing genocide2;

(4) Certain international companies, by conducting business operations in Sudan, bring direct foreign investment dollars to Khartoum and provide both moral and political cover to the Sudanese regime;

(5) Khartoum has funneled large portions of direct foreign investment into military expenditures used to perpetuate the genocide while neglecting needed development projects in the Darfur region3;

(6) The government of Sudan has a history of remedying egregious behavior in response to economic pressure4;

(7) The policy and practice of genocide is abhorrent to the moral and political values of the members of MIT;


We, the undersigned, request the Massachusetts Institute of Technology divest from offending companies doing business with the genocidal government in Sudan immediately (no later than December 31st 2006).


1 Darfur Mortality Study, Table. Coalition of International Justice. Published: April 21, 2005.
http://www.cji.org/pdf/CIJ_Mortality_table_21_april_2005.pdf
2 House Concurrent Resolution 467 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 124
3 Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights. Human Rights Watch. 2003.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103/sudanprint.pdf
4 Silverstein, Ken. Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America's War on Terrorism.
Los Angeles Times. Published: April 29, 2005. p. A1.