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Josephs: Economic pressure needed to stop Darfur genocide

House State Government Committee holding May 17 hearing on divestment

PHILADELPHIA, May 4 -- State Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Phila., chairwoman of the House State Government Committee, has announced that the committee will hold a public hearing on legislation that would address the divestment of public money from Sudan.

The hearing will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, May 17 in Room 201A of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 12th and Arch streets.

"The Sudanese government has been sponsoring ethnic cleansing of non-Arab Darfurians since February 2003. To date, more than 400,000 Darfurian civilians have been killed, and millions more have been displaced and are reliant on humanitarian aid," Josephs said. "The magnitude of the crimes in Darfur combined with the failure of the international community to stem these horrors has given each individual state an opportunity and a responsibility to use its treasury as a tool for change.

"Divestment is an effective way the Commonwealth can influence Sudan's behavior," she said.

Josephs said the hearing will review several proposals introduced in the House designed to address this issue, including a bill she introduced (H.B. 1140).

Her legislation would feature an approach called the targeted divestment model, which calls for the withholding of Pennsylvania investment dollars from companies that are directly or indirectly helping the Sudanese government perpetuate genocide. Only if a company refuses to change its behavior in response to shareholder engagement would the divestment model call for divestment from that company.

Her legislation is the result of her work with the Sudan Divestment Task Force to develop a targeted divestment model for the Commonwealth. The Sudan Divestment Task Force is the same non-profit organization the city of Pittsburgh used. Other cities, including Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., 30 colleges and universities, and California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey and Oregon, all have taken steps to divest from companies doing business in the African nation.

Josephs has pledged her support on this issue. She was the featured speaker at a recent rally in Philadelphia calling for a stop to the genocide and oppression of the Darfur people by the Sudanese government, where she introduced her legislation.