Greenland to publish long-delayed human rights reports on IUD scandal Friday
Naalakkersuisut, Greenland’s government, will publish two expert reports on the human rights dimensions of the forced contraception scandal at a press conference in Nuuk on Friday, August 28, KNR reports, citing a government press release.
Mariane Paviasen Jensen (IA), the naalakkersuisoq, or minister, for children, youth, justice and equality, will present the findings. The expert group was appointed two years ago and tasked with assessing, among other things, whether Denmark’s fitting of IUDs in thousands of Greenlandic girls and women from the 1960s onward amounted to genocide, and which other human rights violations may be at issue.
The four experts: lawyers Dalee Sambo Dorough and Jonas Christoffersen, psychology researcher Jensine Nedergaard and jurist Miriam Cullen, could not agree, and have submitted two separate reports rather than one. The nature of the disagreement has not been disclosed.
Publication has slipped repeatedly, most recently over peer review and translation into Greenlandic, Danish and English. The delays drew criticism during the recent Folketing election campaign, with several candidates demanding the reports’ release. Christoffersen has since told Danish daily Berlingske that parliament should postpone the compensation bill for the affected women, which is scheduled for its third reading in the Folketing on Thursday, a day before the reports appear.
An independent inquiry published last year found that more than 4,000 girls and women, some as young as 12, were fitted with IUDs in Greenland between 1960 and 1991, in most documented cases without consent. In 2024, 143 of the women sued the Danish state for just under 43 million kroner ($6.7 million) in damages. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen apologized in August 2025, and Copenhagen announced in December that affected women would receive 300,000 kroner ($47,000) each.
