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Article

12 Dec 2016

Author:
Azzad Asset Management, International Campaign for the Rohingya, Ursuline Sisters of Tildonk (USA)

First shareholder resolution on Rohingya presses Chevron on business ties to Burma government

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Resolution asks oil giant to halt business with regimes engaged in genocide or crimes against humanity.

A socially responsible investment firm and a Roman Catholic international religious congregation announced today that they have filed the first shareholder resolution focused on the persecuted Burmese Rohingya minority, calling on...Chevron Corporation to evaluate a policy of not doing business with governments that are believed to be engaged in genocide or crimes against humanity. Filed by Azzad Asset Management and the Ursuline Sisters of Tildonk, U.S. Province, the proposed resolution urges the oil giant to halt its relationship with the government of Burma (Myanmar) until that country ends the state-sanctioned violence against its Rohingya minority. It is the first time a shareholder resolution focused on the Rohingya has been submitted to a U.S. corporation.  The proposal...is expected to be voted on by stockholders at the Chevron annual meeting in May 2017.... Through its subsidiary Unocal Myanmar Offshore Co., Ltd., Chevron entered into a production sharing contract (PSC) with the state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) in 2015 to explore for oil and gas in the Rakhine Basin [where many Rohingya live]...

Azzad CEO Bashar Qasem said: "As a socially responsible asset manager, we seek social as well as financial returns on our clients' investments. By conducting business with a government that is accused of committing grave human rights abuses, Chevron has assumed significant legal, moral, reputational, and political liabilities stemming from Burma's repression and violence against the Rohingya people."..

Simon Billenness, executive director of the International Campaign for the Rohingya, stated: "Corporations such as Chevron that choose to do business with the Burmese government run the risk of supporting a regime that, through its repression and violence against the Rohingya, engages in ethnic cleansing and possibly even genocide. History will not be kind to corporations complicit in such crimes against humanity."