Dream For Darfur: Olympic Corporate Sponsor Report Card

Please click here to download the full report card (101 page pdf)

And Now … Not a Word from Our Sponsors: A Report Card Grading Corporate Sponsors of the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Their Response to the Genocide in Darfur is the first in a series of reports by the nonprofit group Dream for Darfur. Future report cards will provide updates on progress by Olympic sponsors on Darfur, and assess the International Olympic Committee’s response to the Darfur crisis. [Note: The companies that support the Olympics do so in four tiers: Worldwide Olympic Partners, Partners, Sponsors, and Suppliers. For ease of reading, throughout this report we refer to all of the corporate supporters of the 2008 Olympic Games as “sponsors.”]

Dream for Darfur, which started in May 2007, focuses on encouraging China to intercede with the regime in Khartoum to bring security to Darfur, using the Olympics as leverage.

The initiative includes private advocacy with people or institutions associated with the Olympics, a grassroots Olympic-style torch relay calling on the government of China to “Bring the Olympic Dream to Darfur,” and public advocacy (email campaigns and outreach to the media). More information about Dream for Darfur is available at http://www.dreamfordarfur.org.

The report card research project was conceived and conducted by Ellen Freudenheim, MPH, Dream for Darfur’s Corporate Outreach Director, with direction from Jill Savitt, Executive Director of Dream for Darfur. James Dunham, Campaign Assistant, provided invaluable research assistance.

Thanks are due to a handful of individuals in senior management positions at the various companies included in this report who engaged in discussion with our organization. We appreciate their expressions of personal concern about Darfur, and their willingness to discuss the set of issues surrounding China, Darfur, and the Olympics. While we may not have agreed with each other, their openness during our dialogue allowed interesting and in-depth discussions, and opened a window onto how multinational corporations address human rights issues.

We also thank the individuals we interviewed for context regarding corporate social responsibility, and the 15 experts from a variety of disciplines who read drafts of this report and provided invaluable feedback. Every attempt has been made to ensure accurate reporting in the following pages; for what companies did or did not do with regard to the Darfur-Olympics issue, we relied solely on what they reported to us in writing.

Dream for Darfur is an initiative of Public Interest Projects, a 501(c)3 public charity, and is funded by taxdeductible contributions from individuals

Please click here to download the full report card (101 page pdf)