Now that increasing numbers of colleges and universities are divesting from companies that do business with the Sudanese government, student activist groups working to end the genocide in Darfur are beginning to shift the focus of their mission.
While the Darfur Action Group at Dartmouth will continue to track companies that could be complicit in the genocide for a divestment list, its members will also work to increase humanitarian aid and bring foreign intervention to the region.
"The problem with Darfur now is basically an issue of political will," said Niral Shah '08, a member of the group's Advisory Committee for Investment Responsibility.
Shah noted that the group will work with other student organizations such as Hillel, which will organize a trip to the Rally to Stop Genocide in Washington, D.C. in late April. Shah said that four or five Dartmouth students are currently slated to participate in the event.
Dartmouth announced last November that it will not invest in companies that are directly complicit in the genocide in Darfur. The Darfur Action Group, however, is still working to put together a more comprehensive list of companies active in Sudan to determine if Dartmouth should withdraw holdings from more companies than the six from which it has already divested.
Shah stated that Dartmouth has been one of the leading colleges in terms of action to end the genocide.
"Academically [on issues related to Darfur], I think we're still very prominent," Shah said, citing student awareness, action on the issue and faculty research such as that of government professor Nelson Kasfir, who published a widely referenced article on Darfur.
A number of peer institutions have also seen a great deal of success with regard to achievement on working to end the Darfur genocide. In addition to Dartmouth, within the Ivy League Harvard, Yale and Brown have all taken action in terms of divestment.
Last week, Harvard announced that it would drop its holdings in the Chinese oil company Sinopec, which has ties to the Sudanese government. Although Harvard had previously divested from PetroChina, this announcement came in the wake of Congressman Mike Capuano's (D-Mass.) call for the university to further divest.
Stanford University divested its holdings last June, and since then, student activists there have shifted their efforts to end the genocide in Darfur.
"Our Darfur advocacy effort has shifted to direct lobbying of our public officials to take more substantive actions to help deploy a multinational protection force to Darfur," said Stanford student Elissa Test, who is the coordinator for the Stanford chapter of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur.
Test said that in addition to lobbying, some activities of STAND members include making presentations in the community to heighten awareness of the genocide and raising money to bring humanitarian relief to the region.
