Forced birth control in Greenland violated women’s rights, experts find

Greenland is establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate a decades-long forced contraceptive scheme targeting Indigenous girls and women. Between the 1960s and 1990s, at least 4,000 Greenlandic Inuits, some as young as 12, received IUDs or contraceptive injections, often without consent or knowledge. This practice, intended by Danish authorities to reduce birth rates and improve living conditions, led to severe health consequences for some victims, including infertility. Two expert reports on the scheme failed to agree on whether it constituted genocide, prompting the establishment of the commission to uncover the truth for reconciliation.

Greenland's justice minister stated that the government cannot definitively conclude whether genocide occurred through forced contraception against the Inuit community in the 1960s and 70s. Experts examined the practice, which involved implanting IUDs in thousands of Inuit women and girls, some as young as 13, often without their knowledge or consent. Two reports on the findings were released, with one concluding that human rights were violated but not necessarily genocide, while the other found no evidence of intent to destroy the Greenlandic population. Denmark previously apologized for the treatment and has passed a compensation law for affected women. Greenland and Denmark have pledged to work together on reconciliation.