Forced birth control in Greenland violated women's rights but didn't constitute genocide, experts find

COPENHAGEN/NUUK, Aug 28 - A campaign of forced contraception in Greenland that ran primarily in the 1960s and 1970s violated women's human rights but did not meet the legal definition of genocide, two expert reports concluded on Friday.

Both reports found administering contraception without valid consent breached the women's right to respect for their private and family life and subjected them to degrading treatment in some cases. The reports differed on whether the practice was systemic.

At least 4,000 Greenlandic women and girls, some as young as 12, received intrauterine devices or contraceptive injections between 1966 and 1991, often without their consent or knowledge, a joint Danish-Greenlandic inquiry found in 2025.

That inquiry found the practice was intended to reduce birth rates and family sizes, which Danish authorities at the time viewed as a way to improve living standards and social and health conditions in Greenland, an Arctic island and semi-sovereign territory of Denmark, with a population of 57,000.

Documented consequences for some women included heavy bleeding, serious infections, scarring of the fallopian tubes, removal of the uterus and the inability to have children.

In 2024, the then-government in Nuuk tasked three legal experts and one psychologist with establishing "whether there have been violations of universal human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples" and "whether the violations meet the definition of genocide". The panel split during its work, with two members resigning and submitting a separate report.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the government would begin the process of establishing a reconciliation commission that he hoped would collaborate with the Danish government.

"The work of the reconciliation commission should not be about assigning blame, but about uncovering the truth with a view to genuine reconciliation, which will create the future we desire as a society," he said.

"We, the government, cannot say that a genocide took place," Justice Minister Mariane Paviasen Jensen said.

The Danish Prime Minister's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The reports' findings are sensitive because U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to take over Greenland, which aspires to full independence one day. His administration has highlighted allegations of misconduct by Danish authorities against the people of its former colony, in seeking to persuade them to turn to Washington.

INTENT IS KEY TO PROVING GENOCIDE

The UN Genocide Convention prohibits not just mass killing but "measures intended to prevent births" within a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, and requires proof the acts were carried out with intent to destroy that group in whole or in part.

In their report, Dalee Sambo Dorough, a lawyer from Alaska and former chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and Miriam Cullen, a law professor at the University of Copenhagen, found "a reasonable basis to believe that Kalaallit Inuit (Greenlandic) women have suffered involuntary contraceptive practices that violated their rights to equality and non-discrimination, to non-interference with private and family life, to decide on the number and spacing of children, and to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health... as well as the right to freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and to maintain bodily and cultural integrity."

They did not, however, conclude that genocide had taken place.

Although it is hard to imagine circumstances in which an attempt to substantially reduce the population of a single ethnic group could not constitute an intent to destroy, in part, that ethnicity, there was also a reasonable basis to believe that "limiting population growth" was one factor behind how doctors approached contraception, they said.

In the other report, Jonas Christoffersen, former head of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and Jensine Nedergaard, a psychologist who worked in Greenland — the experts who resigned from the original panel — accepted women had been wronged but said the extent of the violations could not be established.

Christoffersen and Nedergaard found no evidence "any authority or health professional at any time had any intention of destroying the Greenlandic population."

Greenland's justice minister said that report did not fulfil their commission, without elaborating.

Dorough and Cullen said the evidence could not establish such an intent "on the basis of contraceptive practices alone."

Establishing whether genocide had ever taken place, they wrote, would need to consider other violations Denmark is accused of in Greenland, such as the removal of Inuit children to Danish families. This fell outside the scope of their report.

They added that genocidal intent by Denmark "remains a possible inference that a full review of all relevant information by a court with appropriate jurisdiction and authority might confirm."

DENMARK DID BREACH CONVENTION, ONE REPORT FINDS

Dorough and Cullen found, however, "reasonable basis to believe" Denmark had breached the Genocide Convention by learning as early as 1969 of a serious risk that the programme amounted to the preventing of births within a group, and failing to take all measures within its power. Only a court could settle that question, they said.

Under the terms of the Genocide Convention, which Denmark ratified in 1951, the country pledges not to commit genocide, and to prevent and punish it.

The reports' authors and the women at the centre of the case asked that the findings not be used in questions over Greenland's future ties with Denmark on the grounds that the women's experience should be considered in isolation and not drawn into geopolitical disputes.

'WE WERE TREATED LIKE ANIMALS'

Inger Platou, 70, was one of the women affected.

Speaking to Reuters before the experts' findings were published, she described waking up from what she had been told was a minor operation to discover an IUD had been inserted without her consent.

"It turns out we were treated like animals," she said. "Without consent, they just wanted to stop women from giving birth or having children. It was a very inhumane act."

She said a doctor later told her complications from the coil had left her unable to become pregnant. She went on to adopt two children from Colombia.

"We are very deferential to authority because we are colonial children," she said.

In 2025, Frederiksen apologised to women she said had been subjected to "systematic discrimination" and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen apologised for cases that occurred after Greenland took over its health system in 1992. Denmark on Thursday passed a compensation law to pay 300,000 Danish crowns ($46,758) to each affected woman. REUTERS