On Friday 4 April 2008, the Guardians of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund announced “their intention to exclude from the Fund companies that remain involved in the manufacture of cluster munitions.” The full text of this announcement is available on their website. According to the Guardians, an “exclusion plan” will be implemented when New Zealand signs the treaty prohibiting cluster munitions. 

New Zealand’s Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control Hon Phil Goff has welcomed the decision and stated that the Fund will divest “…once a Treaty on the weapons comes into force.”

The draft agreement is due to be negotiated and adopted next month in Dublin, Ireland, then opened for signature in Oslo, Norway in the first week of December 2008. According to the draft treaty text that governments discussed in Wellington this February, the treaty will entry into force six months after it has been ratified by 20 countries. It is unclear if the Fund will take action to divest in December 2008 upon signature or months, possibly years later once the treaty has entered into force.  When the treaty is adopted in May 2008 the definition of cluster munitions that it will prohibit should be known, so the Fund could take action to divest much sooner than signature or entry into force.

Oxfam NZ has welcomed the recognition by the Super Fund that it needs to divest from cluster munition manufacturers and is calling on the Fund “to review its entire investment portfolio to ensure that it does not invest in any other companies that breach ethical standards.”

More information will be available shortly on the No WARP website.

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