World News
Reports on Danish forced contraception campaign in Greenland split over genocide classification
The Greenlandic government accepted one report that left the genocide question unresolved and rejected another that ruled it out.
The short version
- Two commissioned reports disagree on whether Denmark's past campaign of forced contraception against Greenlandic Indigenous women and girls constituted genocide under UN definitions.
- Greenland's government accepted one report that did not reach a definitive conclusion but rejected the other, which concluded no genocide occurred, citing a failure to meet scientific standards.
- The Danish government recently approved compensation payments of approximately $46,500 to each affected victim following an official apology last year.
Key facts
- Between the 1960s and early 1990s, thousands of Greenlandic Indigenous women and girls were fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs) or given hormonal contraceptive injections, often without their consent or knowledge, to limit Greenland's population growth.[Associated Press]
- Denmark states that more than 4,000 women and girls—about half the fertile female population of Greenland at the time—received IUDs between the 1960s and mid-1970s.[Associated Press]
- The Greenlandic government released two split reports on the matter, which were originally intended to be a single publication before two of the four authors broke away due to professional and geopolitical disagreements.[Associated Press]
- The rejected report concluded that no genocide occurred, arguing there was no empirical evidence that Danish or Greenlandic authorities, or healthcare workers, intended to destroy the Greenlandic population.[Associated Press]
- The accepted report did not rule on whether a genocide occurred, stating that intent to destroy could not be determined solely from the contraception cases, and recommended broader study of other Danish historical practices.[Associated Press]
- The Danish government has approved payouts of 300,000 Danish kroner (about $46,500) to each of the victims, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has endorsed plans to set up a reconciliation commission.[Associated Press]
What remains uncertain
- The Greenlandic government has not publicly declared whether its leaders believe the historical forced contraception campaign constituted genocide.[Associated Press]