17 June 07 - At 5pm Tuesday 19 June, Labour deputy leadership candidate Peter Hain MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, will address a public meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Genocide Prevention, called to discuss targeted divestment and sanctions on over the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

Massive investments by companies

The meeting will see publication of a new dossier on Darfur Divestment by the Aegis Trust, detailing British companies and institutions with holdings in Sudan’s oil sector; Barclays, for example, hold shares to the value of at least £381m in oil companies operating in Sudan. The dossier sets out a strategy for targeted divestment to increase the economic pressure on Khartoum and reduce funding for mass atrocities.

Download dossier (PDF)

Sudan’s oil revenues have increased seventy-fold in recent years, from US$61m in 1999 to to US$4.5bn in 2006, helping the government to triple military expenditure (between 1997 and 2004) and pay the Janjaweed militia responsible for so much of the killing.