Greenland contraception campaign violated rights but was not genocide, reports find

Nuuk, Greenland. A forced contraception campaign in Greenland, primarily carried out during the 1960s and 1970s, violated women’s human rights but did not meet the legal definition of genocide, two expert reports concluded on Friday. The reports found that contraception was administered without valid consent, affecting thousands of Greenlandic women and girls.

Findings of the reports

Both reports concluded that administering contraception without valid consent breached the women’s right to respect for private and family life. They also found that some women were subjected to degrading treatment.

The reports differed over whether the practice was systemic.

Scale and consequences

A joint Danish-Greenlandic inquiry in 2025 found that 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.

The inquiry found that the practice was intended to reduce birth rates and family sizes. Danish authorities at the time viewed this 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 inability to have children.

Government response

In 2024, the then-government in Nuuk tasked three legal experts and one psychologist with determining whether human rights and indigenous peoples’ rights had been violated and whether the actions met 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 establish a reconciliation commission. He said its work “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.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she would read the reports “with great interest” and welcomed Nielsen’s proposal.

“A reconciliation commission gives us the opportunity to look back at the darkness in our shared history, engage with it critically, and acknowledge the pain it may have caused,” she said.

Call for international review

Greenland’s Siumut party said the question of genocide should be decided by “a competent and independent international court”.

“Today we could have been far more Greenlanders,” the party said.