Today I received a Valentine's Day package from my grandparents. My grandma had noticed this article in the Wall Street Journal and sent it to me, along with their wonderful letter and gift! : ) I have tried to photograph the pictures in the paper, I found them affective, though not depicting some of the atrocities I think we should be shown. I think pictures of the atrocities happening in Darfur would be more affective. Sure they would be gruesome, but that's REALLY happening. Most people don't have a problem letting their kids play shoot-em-up video games and watch violent movies anyway.
Back to the point of this post, the article in the Journal was entitled 'Mutual Funds and Sudan.' I was shocked when I read the title; I never guessed these words would be in a sentence together. The following are some of the quotes from the article that I would like to bring attention to:
"...Sudan is home to investments by large international companies that are fixtures in many Americans' mutual funds and retirement plans.
In recent months, an array of efforts have been launched to press companies, pension plans - and now, mutual funds- not to do business in Sudan. The goal is to urge Sudan's government to find an end to the violence.
...Through its mutual funds, Boston-based Fidelity is the largest U.S. holder of American depositary shares in PetroChina Co., a Chinese oil giant with Sudanese projects.
...U.S. companies have been prohibited from doing business in Sudan since 1997, but it is not illegal for an American firm to own shares in a foreign company doing business there."
Activists are working hard to get Fidelity Investments to divest from this investment. The article discusses many major US companies and several states that are divesting and forcing investments out of Sudan. I think these quotes summarize what Wall Street is doing to help Sudan.
As I continued reading I wanted to make mention of the following paragraph as well in order to add the links it gives:
"There are ways for investors to see if a mutual fund has Sudan-related investments. The site sudaninvestment.org
includes a feature, "The Sudan Screening Tool," which evaluates fund holdings based on criteria related to Darfur. Another site, investedinterests.com
, offers a similar tool that examines an array of issues, from Sudan to terrorism"
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