Charities Urging Sudan Divestment See Success

A campaign to encourage Americans to divest their stock holdings in companies that support the Sudanese government is gaining steam, reports the Los Angeles Times’s Kathy M. Kristof in her personal-finance column.

“Divestment has been the one real action that the government of Sudan has responded to,” Adam Sterling, director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force, in Washington, tells Ms. Kristof. “Genocide is expensive. The Sudanese government relies heavily on foreign investment to fund its military and the janjaweed militias.”

Web sites like the Genocide Intervention Network help people figure out if any of the stocks in their mutual funds have ties to the Sudanese government.

“People are finally beginning to realize that acting as part of a group can be really powerful,” Amy Domini, president of Domini Social Investments, a family of mutual funds intended to be socially responsible, tells Ms. Kristof.

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