Greenland to open truth commission on forced contraception

Greenland said on Aug. 28 it would establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission over Denmark's forced contraception campaign against thousands of Inuit women, after experts failed to agree on whether the scheme constituted genocide.

The campaign ran from the 1960s to 1990. More than 4,000 Greenlandic women were forced to wear a contraceptive coil, or intrauterine device, in the vast majority of cases without their consent or, if they were minors, without their parents' consent. Girls as young as 12 were affected, and some were later unable to have children.

Greenland Justice Minister Marianne Paviasen said the government could not say whether there had been genocide. She said one expert report concluded there was no genocide, while another said there might have been.

The reports did agree that the contraception programme may have violated multiple human rights and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said Greenland wanted to begin a healing process and would set up a reconciliation commission, while seeking cooperation with Denmark.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Copenhagen and Nuuk would handle the political process together. Denmark's parliament agreed on Thursday that women affected by the campaign can claim compensation from Copenhagen. Frederiksen presented Denmark's official apology last year.

The four-member expert commission was appointed in August 2024 to examine the scheme. It produced two reports after failing to agree on one conclusion.

Survivor Henriette Berthelsen had criticised the process before the reports were presented, saying no Greenlandic Inuit had been appointed as experts. She has long called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to acknowledge what happened and allow people to move forward.

An investigation presented in September 2025 found that by the late 1970s, one in two Greenlandic women of childbearing age, at least 4,070 women, had been fitted with an IUD.