In Response to Darfur Genocide, Campus Divestment Campaign Targets Sudan

Interview with Nick Robinson, a Yale law student and director of Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

The genocide in Darfur, Sudan, continues, with as many of 200,000 Darfurians killed over the past few years. The genocide is fueling the movement on college campuses for divestment from companies doing business in Sudan. On Feb. 17, Yale University President Rick Levin announced that Yale will not invest in five oil companies doing business in Sudan, and will divest of its holdings in at least one oil company that operates there. The university's decision was based on a report by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School. The report cited Sudanese government support for the janjaweed, the Arab militias implicated in the genocide in Darfur, the western region of Sudan. Sudan is a mid-level oil player, with foreign oil companies extracting substantial amounts of oil since 1999.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Nick Robinson, a third-year law student at Yale, a student director of the human rights clinic, and one of the main authors of the report. He explains why the report focused on the foreign oil companies in Sudan and how the divestment movement on campuses is spreading, similar to the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.

For a copy of the report on Darfur, visit the Yale Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility at www.acir.yale.edu/sudan.html or call the Human Rights Clinic at (203) 432-1729.

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