Institute stands by human rights violations finding in Greenland IUD case

The Institute for Human Rights continues to believe that Greenlandic girls and women suffered serious, systematic human rights violations in the IUD case, DR reports. Its director, Louise Holck, says there is no longer a need for legal proceedings under the Danish Parliament’s compensation scheme.

Holck’s position comes despite two recently published reports reaching different conclusions about whether the IUD insertions breached human rights.

One report, written by former institute director Jonas Christoffersen and psychologist Jensine Nedergaard, says there is no factual basis for concluding that many IUD insertions violated the human rights of Greenlandic girls and women. The authors point out that consent rules were different in the 1960s and 1970s, when thousands received IUDs, and that violations of human rights conventions must be assessed individually.

Holck said the report had not changed her view.

“I still believe that the accounts show that human rights have been violated,” she said.

The Institute for Human Rights publicly supported the women in 2024, when a lawsuit involving 143 Greenlandic women and the state was still expected to go ahead. The institute asked the Eastern High Court for permission to join the case and said the women had been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment in breach of several international conventions.

Holck said her assessment was based on the historical report and on conversations with many of the women involved.

“I have heard their stories and testimonies, and it has been my assessment that things happened that must not happen,” she said.

The second report, by University of Copenhagen law lecturer Miriam Cullen and political scientist Dalee Sambo Dorough, reaches the opposite conclusion. Cullen is also affiliated with the Institute for Human Rights, while Dorough specialises in legislation concerning the human rights of Indigenous peoples.

Using the term “reasonable grounds to believe”, which United Nations commissions of inquiry use when they cannot assess all relevant evidence but have enough material to draw preliminary conclusions, Cullen and Dorough say contraception was allocated without valid consent in Greenland from at least 1966.

They conclude that the practice caused physical and psychological harm amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment. They say this breached Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 7 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

They also stress that only a court can make a final and binding determination on the legal questions.

The Greenlandic government said when the reports were published that only the Cullen and Dorough report complied with the terms of reference for examining the human rights aspects of the case.

Christoffersen and Nedergaard’s report states that legal consent was required throughout the period from 1960 to 2025. They say that inserting an IUD without sufficient legal consent would, as a general rule, breach Article 8, which covers women’s physical integrity and their right to make decisions about their own bodies and reproduction.

However, they argue that the law throughout the period allowed consent to be given through tacit and accepting behaviour, even when that behaviour was not fully voluntary.