New Orleans approved a resolution on Thursday pledging to take steps to avoid contracting with or investing in corporations whose practices violate human rights — an initiative pushed in the council as part of the campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its occupation of Palestinian territories. New Orleans became the first city in the South — and one of the largest in the country — to pass a resolution in accordance with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction Movement, known by its initials BDS.

“This resolution specifically recognizes the city’s social and ethical obligations to take steps to avoid contracting with or investing in certain corporations, namely those that consistently violate human rights, civil rights, or labor rights,” said council President Jason Williams just ahead of the vote. The resolution passed the council unanimously, with all five members present voting in support.

Five of seven city council members, including the mayor-elect, co-sponsored the resolution, drafted by the New Orleans Palestinian Solidarity Committee, and brought it to a vote on Thursday. Palestinian Solidarity Committee organizers said one of their demands, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration last year, included a human rights screening for all the city’s contracts and investments to avoid doing business with companies complicit in abuses.

Both backers and detractors agree that the movement to boycott Israel is growing. In recent weeks alone, a New York court has been hearing the case of a pro-BDS student group that was banned from a college campus and pop singer Lorde acceded to boycott activists’ requests that she cancel a show in Israel. Some local governments have passed measures in opposition to the BDS movement — and such measures have been pushed on the federal level as well — but cities like Portland, Oregon, have passed limited pro-BDS measures.

The resolution says that the city council “encourages the creation of a process to review direct investments and contracts for inclusion on, or removal from, the city’s list of corporate securities and contractual partners.” The human rights screening is meant to be “consistent with its responsibilities to its residents,” the resolution states, because “the city has social and ethical obligations to take steps to avoid contracting with or investing in corporations whose practices consistently violate human rights.”