The good with the bad

Why only investing in ‘’good’’ countries is tricky

Last year at the United Nations, New Zealand urged the Philippines to ‘‘appropriately investigate deaths which have occurred in the course of police operations associated with the war on drugs’’.

Tough-talking Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has resulted in what Human Rights Watch called ‘‘an unprecedented level of killing by law enforcement’’ since he took office in June 2016.

But even as New Zealand was signalling its dismay at extrajudicial killings in the country, the New Zealand Super Fund, our sovereign wealth fund designed to help pay tomorrow’s pensions, had $2.9 million invested with the Philippines government.

At the end of November, the $37.4 billion Super Fund had $2.7b

invested in sovereign bonds, issued by governments of countries which sometimes do not share New Zealand’s high regard for human rights.

That sum included the $497,105 invested in Kazakhstan, a central Asian country ruled by Nursultan Nazarbayev since 1990, which has been a focus of United Nations concern.

In June last year, Amnesty International said there was a culture of ‘‘impunity for torture’’ in the

country’s security forces. In August 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Committee noted Kazakhstan’s ‘‘reported high rates of torture’’, a low number of prosecutions for torture, and ‘‘mild’’ penalties imposed on those found guilty of torture.

The Super Fund has made very public stands on excluding businesses such as tobacco producers and manufacturers of cluster munitions. Companies involved in human rights abuses may also be excluded. The fund publishes a list of excluded companies, and a full list of the shares it is invested in.

But it does not publish a list of its sovereign bond holdings, though provided it when asked.

The list revealed the bulk of its 50 sovereign bond investments were in the governments of modern, industrial democracies.

As well as Kazakhstan and the Philippines, the fund also had $5m invested with the government of Russia, which Human Rights Watch and the Cluster Bomb Coalition accuse of being involved with cluster munitions use, first in Crimea and then

Syria.

There were also

GETTY ROBERT KITCHIN/STUFF Finance Minister Grant Robertson says the Super Fund must have room to make its own specific decisions. ‘‘No one should be comfortable with that level of political interference.’’ Filipino protesters join a prayer demonstrators calling for an end to...