We, the undersigned, call on the council to divest its pension fund from, and end procurement contracts with, companies enabling Israel’s grave violations of Palestinian rights.

Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians - almost half of them children. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down an interim ruling affirming there is plausible evidence Israel is committing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza. As a State Party to the Genocide Convention, the UK has a binding obligation to employ all means reasonably available to prevent and deter further genocidal acts. We stand with the countless human rights organisations, civil society groups, lawyers, and thousands of our neighbours, workers, and students in Haringey in condemning these acts and the support, direct and indirect, our government and institutions have lent them.

In June 2024, UN experts issued a statement demanding that states and companies stop all arms transfers to Israel. They outlined that financial institutions, such as banks and pension funds, investing in arms companies supplying Israel must cease, writing that financial institutions’ “failure to prevent or mitigate their business relationships with these arms manufacturers transferring arms to Israel could move from being directly linked to human rights abuses to contributing to them, with repercussions for complicity in potential atrocity crimes.” We further assert that investment in arms companies anywhere is incompatible with any responsible investment strategy.

Haringey Council’s own records show that £2.8 million of its Pension Fund is exposed to arms companies such as Elbit Systems and companies cited by the Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights as operating in, and therefore supporting the occupation of, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, such as Booking.com.

Haringey Council is rightly proud of its history of upholding human rights, notably in its support for the South African anti-apartheid movement, which it joined by boycotting South African goods. The Council’s current plan for a responsible investment strategy is an opportunity to build on that history and end its complicity in the grave violations of Palestinian rights. The recent defeat of the previous government’s attempts to restrict the right of public bodies to take ethical investment and procurement decisions means that there is no barrier to the council exercising its profound moral obligation.

We call on the Council to:

1. Commit to divest the pension fund administered by the council and by London CIV from all arms companies, and most urgently those complicit in Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians. This includes arms companies supplying Israel with weapons and military technology; companies providing infrastructure for Israel’s unlawful military occupation of Palestinian land; and companies conducting business activity in Israel’s illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

2. End procurement contracts with companies complicit in Israel’s attacks. For example, terminate all banking arrangements with Barclays, which provides substantial financing to companies supplying Israel with weapons used in its attacks on Palestinians.

3. Commit to a clear timeline for these actions, adopting a responsible investment strategy that ends all above investments within six months of accepting this petition.