Timeline of recognizing the genocide in Darfur


Sudan and its government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have committed pervasive violations of human rights in Darfur, Sudan, since March 2003, earning the designation of the first genocide of the 21st century.
  • Mar 2003 - Generally regarded as the beginning date of the genocide in Darfur.
  • May 2004 - Physicians for Human Rights investigation in refugee camps along the Chad/Sudan border concluded that genocide was unfolding in Sudan
  • Jul 2004 - US Senate and House of Representatives unanimously adopt a joint resolution declaring the atrocities in Darfur genocide.
  • Sep 2004 - Secretary of State Colin Powell statement that "genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility"
  • Jan 2005 - United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Darfur found that the government of Sudan provided weapons to pro-government militias in Darfur and that “government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur.
  • Jun 2005 - President Bush reiterated that the US Government believes genocide is taking place in Darfur
  • Dec 2005 - Human Rights Watch reported: “The Sudanese government at the highest levels is responsible for widespread and systematic abuses in Darfur.”
  • Sep 2006 - President Bush speech to the UN identifying the "unspeakable violence" and "atrocities" in Darfur as genocide.

Sudan divestment background


The National Islamic Front [NIF] regime in Khartoum seized power by military coup in 1989, deposing an elected government in order to abort the most promising peace process since Sudan’s independence in 1956. Since the 1989 coup, the regime has ruled by means of tyranny, a ruthlessly efficient network of security services, and a brutal domestic policy that includes serial genocide. These fundamental facts of Sudanese political reality have not changed with the formation of a notional “Government of National Unity.” The National Islamic Front dominates this new “government,” and remains an illegitimate cabal of genocidaires, largely unchanged since 1989. They could not survive long without the economic and personal financial benefits that derive directly from foreign investment.

Consequently, as genocide continues to unfold in Darfur and eastern Chad, and the final peace agreement between Khartoum and southern Sudan remains deeply threatened, a growing number of observers---individual and institutional---have argued that there can be no moral justification for holding equity investments in the many European and Asian companies that are now propping up the Khartoum regime by means of large commercial investments and capital projects. (See, for example, Don Cheadle (from the movie “Hotel Rwanda”) and John Prendergast (International Crisis Group), "Universities Need to Divest," October 2005.

Perhaps surprisingly to many Americans, a number of these European and Asian companies list their shares on the New York Stock Exchange and are held in many mutual funds and pension funds. Other companies list on the London Stock Exchange or exchanges in other countries. Still others seek to enter the US bond market (debt market) in order to raise American capital to support their enterprises in Khartoum and northern Sudan.

How many companies are investing in Sudan in ways that provide the NIF regime with essential commercial and economic support? ... all of these companies have chosen to accept payment in the form of Khartoum’s petrodollars---revenues raised from oil development projects located almost exclusively in southern Sudan, though presently used for purposes that only marginally contribute to southern development (the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of January 2005 calls for the Government of South Sudan to receive 50% of revenues from southern oil production: to date, nothing approaching this amount has been directed to the desperately poor people of the south).
- From Professor Eric Reeves, SudanReeves.org