I have had my beautiful steed for twenty years...he has always been full of energy and we have had many adventures together.  He got sick last summer and I have been told by the vet that when it gets hot again, he will leave me.  I have been nursing him through the winter and the cool weather has helped. 

Last Sunday I was able to ride him again gently, and it was wonderful - no discomfort for him.  We bathed him afterward and he is fine.  It filled me with joy and we savored every minute intensely.

Since 1982, when Calvert was one of the first SRI firms to develop a weapons exclusion, the international security environment and the conduct of warfare have been transformed. The increasingly complex uses and impacts of weapons in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world have compelled us to review and now revise our longstanding approach.

Civilians are frequent victims of cluster bombs, landmines and other indiscriminate weapons that exact horrific casualties. Armed forces are often engaged in international peacekeeping or humanitarian missions, using the same equipment they would deploy in wars between nations. Just as militaries are developing advanced forms of electronic warfare, light weapons continue to cause mass casualties in countries like Rwanda, where almost a million people were slaughtered with machetes in just three months in 1994.

Calvert decided to focus on these evolving realities against the backdrop of our enduring values, emphasizing the humanitarian impacts of warfare on civilians. In September 2007, we consulted two outside experts: William Schulz, the former Executive Director of Amnesty International, U.S.A. and former President of the Association of the Unitarian Universalist Church; and Reuben Brigety, Assistant Professor of International Relations at George Mason University and former Human Rights Watch weapons researcher and U.S. Naval Academy graduate.

Mr. Schulz emphasized the inescapable moral choices surrounding the use of force, especially the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist stance in the face of crimes against humanity such as the genocides of the last dozen years in the Balkans, Rwanda and Darfur. He highlighted international humanitarian law (IHL) as the most appropriate standard to guide Calvert's analysis of the impact of certain weapons on civilians at a time when respect for IHL is more critical than ever.

Mr. Brigety also underlined the importance of IHL in the current international security environment. He noted the difficulty of identifying weapons that might be used mostly in peacekeeping missions but pointed to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) as the most applicable standard for identifying inherently offensive weapons.

In light of these consultations and our overall review, Calvert has updated its weapons exclusion. Calvert's socially screened equity funds now avoid investing in companies that

• manufacture, design, or sell weapons, or the critical components of weapons, that violate international humanitarian law (IHL), or
• manufacture, design, or sell inherently offensive weapons, as defined by the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the U.N. Register on Conventional Arms, or the munitions designed for use in such inherently offensive weapons.

These new criteria enable Calvert to evaluate companies in light of these internationally accepted standards addressing what we believe are the most salient contemporary issues.

Elements of the New Standard (1) -International Humanitarian law

IHL forms a set of rules seeking to limit the effects of armed conflict, including a ban on the weapons with the most impact on civilians such as land mines and cluster bombs. It is important to note that IHL is distinct from but complementary to international human rights law. While human rights law protects individuals at all times, IHL applies only in situations of armed conflict and focuses on two key areas:

• It protects those who are not, or are no longer, fighting; and
• It restricts the legal means of warfare or weapons as well as methods of warfare or military tactics.

IHL prohibits all means and methods of warfare that:

• Fail to discriminate between those fighting and those who are not, the purpose being to protect the civilian population, individual civilians, and civilian property;
• Cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering; or
• Cause severe or long-term damage to the environment.

Elements of the New Standard (2)-Offensive Weapons

The CFE and the U.N. Register guide our approach to inherently offensive weapons.

The CFE defines five categories of conventional weapons for waging offensive campaigns: battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, combat aircraft, and combat helicopters.

The U.N. Register on Conventional Arms includes these five categories plus warships and missiles. Companies manufacturing, designing or selling any of these categories of weapons or associated munitions are ineligible for investment in Calvert's socially screened equity funds.

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