At least 4,000 Greenlandic women and girls received intrauterine devices or contraceptive injections between 1966 and 1991, some as young as 12, often without their consent or even knowledge. The United Nations’ 1948 genocide convention defines genocide to include imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group. Two reports investigating the practice were split over whether it constituted genocide. The Greenlandic government commissioned the inquiry but did not state its conclusion on whether genocide occurred.
Danish health authorities carried out the policy for decades. The focus was on women from the Greenlandic Inuit community, the indigenous people of the island. A joint Danish-Greenlandic investigation completed in 2025 found that from 1966 to 1991, at least 4,000 women and girls in Greenland received intrauterine devices or contraceptive injections. In some cases, this occurred without their consent or even knowledge, including cases involving girls as young as 12 years old.
The practice violated women’s rights. Both studies confirmed that the use of contraceptives without the genuine consent of women violated their right to private and family life. The accepted report concluded that there was reasonable basis to believe that Denmark failed in its responsibility to prevent genocide, but that the question of whether Denmark committed genocide remained complex and required a thorough determination by a higher court. The authors of the 2026 report found that there was a reasonable basis to believe that the forced contraception without valid consent formed some part of medical practice in Greenland since at least 1966 and has caused physical and psychological harm that constituted inhuman and degrading treatment contrary to international law.
One report said there was no genocide. The authors of the rejected report wrote that there is no empirical evidence to assume that any Danish or Greenlandic authority, or any individual healthcare professional, at any time had any intention of destroying the Greenlandic population or a significant proportion of it. There was no genocide. The accepted report, however, did not conclude whether there was a genocide.
Greenland’s justice minister told reporters that the government cannot conclude whether genocide was committed against the Inuit community after experts examined the use of forced contraception in the 1960s and 70s. We cannot say, on behalf of the government, whether there was genocide. This is something we can continue to debate. The two experts who remained, Alaskan lawyer Dalee Sambo Dorough and University of Copenhagen law professor Miriam Cullen, found in their report that the rights of Inuit women in Greenland had been violated. But they said that they could not conclude that genocide had taken place on the basis of contraceptive practices alone. They added that genocidal intent by Denmark remained a possible inference that a court might establish, based on evidence that fell outside the scope of their report, such as the removal of Inuit children to be raised by Danish families.
The rival report, produced by Jonas Christoffersen, former head of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and Jensine Nedergaard, a psychologist who had worked in Greenland, accepted that women had been wronged but could not establish the extent of their mistreatment. They found no evidence any authority or health professional at any time had any intention of destroying the Greenlandic population.
Denmark has finalized an agreement to provide compensation to thousands of Indigenous women and girls in Greenland for instances of enforced contraception conducted by health officials over several decades beginning in the 1960s. The Danish health ministry announced that women who received contraceptive measures without knowledge or consent between 1960 and 1991 would be eligible to apply for individual compensation amounts of 300,000 Danish kroner, approximately 46,000 dollars, with applications opening next April.
Greenland said it would establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Denmark’s forced contraception of thousands of indigenous Inuits, after experts failed to agree on whether the scheme constituted genocide. The experts were unable to agree on a unanimous conclusion, presenting two different reports instead. One states there was no genocide at all, while the other says there might have been. The reports did however agree that the contraception programme may have violated multiple human rights and the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Why does this story break now, after decades of silence? Who benefits from framing the question as unresolved when at least 4,000 women were affected? What would the story look like if the opposite were true, if the evidence pointed clearly one way or the other?
The Danish parliament is due to finalise compensation legislation for affected women. The findings will arrive just one day after the Danish parliament is due to finalise compensation legislation for affected women. Greenland will present two long-awaited reports examining human rights violations linked to historic cases in which Greenlandic women and girls were subjected to the insertion of intrauterine devices and other forms of contraception, including whether Denmark’s actions could meet the legal definition of genocide.
An independent investigation released in September revealed that over 350 Indigenous women and girls from Greenland, including some as young as 12, reported being forcibly administered contraception by health authorities, although it is believed that more than 4,000 women and girls were impacted by these actions. Danish authorities indicated that up to 4,500 women and girls, reportedly half of the fertile female population in Greenland at that time, were administered IUDs from the 1960s until the mid-1970s. The alleged intention behind these actions was to curtail population growth in Greenland by preventing pregnancies, as the island’s population was surging due to improved living conditions and healthcare.
Both the Danish and Greenlandic governments issued formal apologies acknowledging their roles in this historical injustice. Denmark has issued a formal apology to Greenlandic women who were subjected to coercive birth control practices during the second half of the twentieth century. For decades, thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with intrauterine devices without their informed consent as part of a state-led population control policy implemented in Greenland. The investigation confirmed that the birth control measures were not isolated incidents but part of a coordinated state policy. Estimates indicate that between 4,000 and 5,000 women and girls were affected between 1966 and 1970 alone, representing a significant proportion of Greenland’s female population of reproductive age at the time. The report concluded that informed consent was routinely absent and that the policy disproportionately targeted Inuit women.
The question remains. What does it mean for a government to say it cannot conclude whether genocide occurred when the evidence shows at least 4,000 women were subjected to forced contraception? What does it mean for two reports to reach different conclusions on the same facts? Who decides what counts as genocide, and on what timeline?
The truth commission will hear more testimony. The reports will be debated in parliaments and courts. The women who came forward will wait for compensation that may or may not arrive. The question of genocide will hang over all of it, unresolved, unanswerable, or perhaps answerable only by a court that has not yet been convened.
I do not know what the answer is. I only know that the question matters, and that it has mattered for decades, and that it will matter for decades more.