Following months of local Islington residents’ research and campaigning, Islington Council have committed to:

1. Divestment of £2.6 million of the pension fund from companies complicit in illegal settlement activity in the West Bank*
    
2. Revising it's procurement policy including finding an alternative to banking with Barclays*

Islington PSC welcomes the commitments made by Islington Council, but we believe more can be done and we need your help! With the ongoing genoicde in Gaza, the council must disclose and divest from arms companies. If you live, work or study in Islington please sign our petition with our demands and share as widely as you can!

Once we reach 2,000 signatures, councillors will be required to debate these demands in an upcoming council meeting and formally respond. 

Please also opt-in to receive further updates on the campaign!  

 

Here are our demands:

Pension fund: Divest for Palestinian rights!

1. Disclose the pension fund's investments in companies that enable, facilitate and profit from human rights violations or violations of international law as part of prolonged military occupations, apartheid and genocide and in bonds issued by countries involved in prolonged military occupations.
2. Divest from all the companies and bonds disclosed.
3. Provide a timescale for divestment and quarterly progress reports.
   Update the Investment Strategy Statement to include a commitment to divest from companies that enable, facilitate and profit from human rights violations or violations of international law and schedule regular reviews of fund holdings to identify further exclusions. 
4. Publish statements regarding changes to the pension fund strategy and disinvestment programme.

Procurement: Boycott Barclays and other complicit suppliers! 

1.  Companies that enable, facilitate and profit from human rights violations or violations of international law to be excluded from tendering for contracts with the council.
2.  Set up a working group to strengthen the ethical criteria of the council's procurement procedure.
3. Publish regular statements regarding the progress of the group and report on its findings.

*The holdings flagged for divestment are all included in a database of businesses produced by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and include several banks providing financial services to settlements, Motorola, which supplies surveillance and ID equipment, and tourism companies Airbnb and Bookings.com, which list accommodation in the occupied territories for hire.

The OHCHR database was updated in June 2023 and produced specifically to identify businesses supporting settlement activity in the West Bank and so does not include any of the companies that have supplied and profited from the Israeli military's assault on and siege of the Gaza strip, which began in October last year, and which has been judged plausibly genocidal by the International Court of Justice.

*Palestine Solidarity Campagin: Boycott Barclays

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