Greenland commission to publish report on forced IUD campaign and possible genocide

A Greenlandic commission will on Friday publish a report examining whether Denmark’s campaign of forced contraception against Inuit women between the 1960s and 1990 amounted to genocide. The probe follows revelations that thousands of Greenlandic women were fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs) without consent in what victims and officials describe as one of the island’s darkest chapters.

What the commission is set to decide

The commission was tasked with assessing the legal implications of a campaign in which, between the 1960s and 1990, more than 4,000 Greenlandic women were forced to wear an IUD in the vast majority of cases without their consent or that of their parents when the girls were minors. An investigation presented in September 2025 found that by the late 1970s at least 4,070 women about one in two Greenlandic women of childbearing age had been fitted with an IUD.

Disagreement among experts and delayed reports

The commission’s four appointed experts were unable to agree on an approach and wrote two separate reports, which were submitted nearly six months behind schedule.

Voices from Greenland

“For us, it’s about trying to understand our history,”

said Naaja Nathanielsen, a member of parliament representing Greenland in Denmark’s parliament, who announced the creation of the commission in August 2024 when she was Greenland’s minister of justice and gender equality.

Survivors say the inquiry has stirred long-buried trauma. One victim, Henriette Berthelsen, criticised the commission for lacking Greenlandic Inuit experts and said:

“For me, this is not just about history or politics. It’s my body, my life, and my right to self-determination.”

Another survivor, Kirstine Najarak Berthelsen, described how media attention has revived painful memories:

“I realised everything it had cost me — all those hospitalisations, those surgeries, the schooling I missed and, above all, those pains I had never associated with that damn IUD… Everything that happened to people is beyond imagination if you haven’t experienced it yourself,”

she said.

Political and legal fallout

Greenland, once a Danish colony for three centuries and now an autonomous territory, shares a complex relationship with Copenhagen. Historian Astrid Andersen of the Danish Institute for International Studies said:

“Everything that is happening between Denmark and Greenland now is scrutinised… But everyone in Greenland has been very clear that this tragic case should not be used to legitimise other political purposes internationally.”

On Thursday, the Danish parliament agreed that women affected by the forced contraception campaign can claim compensation from Copenhagen an initiative pushed by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who presented Denmark’s official apology last year.

Calls for truth and reconciliation

The scandal first gained wider attention when a victim spoke out in the media and a 2022 podcast series revealed the full extent of the campaign. Survivors and some politicians have urged further measures: Henriette Berthelsen has called for a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission, an idea the Danish government is considering.

What happens next

The commission’s conclusions will be presented on Friday, after which Greenland’s government will decide how to move forward based on the report’s findings.