Without any legislative mandate, the New York City Comptroller’s Office with New York City’s Pension Funds Trustees have since 2006 (following the Sudanese government’s disregard for the Darfur Peace Agreement) been aggressively reaching out to companies in Sudan to use our leverage to induce them to provide humanitarian assistance.  

In addition, the New York City Pension Funds have been actively seeking partnerships with other institutional investors to use our collective weight to pressure corporations to do the following:

• Commit company resources to assist in humanitarian aid and recovery programs as called for in the peace agreement.  This could be done through international organizations, including UN Commission for Refugees and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which provides food, water, medicines and shelter to the displaced persons and refugees of Darfur.

• Seek to persuade the Sudanese government to live up to its side of the Darfur Peace Agreement of 2006, including facilitating international relief and peace-keeping efforts, and most importantly, adherence to its commitment under the peace agreement to totally disarm the pro-government paramilitaries.

Finally, in a meeting just last week with the New York City Pension Funds, it was mutually decided that the Comptroller’s Office would call in all investment managers to inform them that they should undertake a review of their holdings with regards to corporations doing business in the Sudan, and make the same demands on those corporations.

We look forward to working with the State Comptroller in strong pursuit of these types of humanitarian initiatives in Sudan.

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