Danish parliament funds 300,000-kroner payouts for Greenland’s forced IUD programme

Denmark's parliament voted on Thursday to pay 300,000 kroner, about $47,000 or €40,000, to each Greenlandic woman who can show she was fitted with an intrauterine device without proper consent between 1960 and 1991. An estimated 4,500 women fall inside that window. Denmark ran Greenland's health system until 1992. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen apologised for the programme in Nuuk last year. The vote turns that apology into a cheque.

Naaja Nathanielsen, a member of parliament from Greenland's Inuit Ataqatigiit party, thanked colleagues for the broad support and said the decision matters to Greenlandic women and to Greenlandic society. Applications through Patienterstatningen, the Danish patient compensation board, opened on 1 July. One hundred and seventy-one women filed in the first month. The legal scheme is due to take effect on 1 September 2026. The filing window runs to 1 September 2028.

What the programme did

From the 1960s into the early 1990s, Danish doctors inserted coils in thousands of Inuit women and girls, some of them 12 or younger, and in some cases gave hormonal injections. Many patients were not told what the device was. Some learned they had one only when a later doctor found it. An independent investigation published last year documented more than 350 detailed accounts and estimated that more than 4,000 women and girls were affected. Denmark remained responsible for health care on the island until 1992. Greenland is now largely self-governing and still part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

The stated public-health aim at the time was to slow a high birth rate. Historians and Greenlandic politicians treat that aim as population control. The Greenlandic government has asked experts to test whether the Danish state's conduct meets the legal definition of genocide. Two reports commissioned for that question are scheduled for release on Friday, 28 August. The parliamentary vote does not wait for those reports. It also does not close civil suits already filed by more than 140 women.

The gap the money does not fill

Health Minister Ida Auken's bill was delayed by this year's Danish election and the coalition talks that followed. Greenland's human rights council has already criticised the 2028 cutoff. Doctors still find coils in women who never knew they had one. A woman who discovers a device in 2029 would fall outside the statutory window unless parliament extends it. Patienterstatningen's Trine Berner Madsen has said many applicants need time before they can write the medical history the form demands.

Three hundred thousand kroner is a fixed sum. It does not scale with infertility, pain, or the age at which the device was inserted. It is an acknowledgement payment, not a damages trial. Frederiksen's apology last year used the language of a dark chapter. Thursday's vote is the first time the Folketing has attached a number to that chapter for every eligible woman rather than leaving claims to individual lawsuits.

Greenland's population is about 57,000. Four thousand five hundred women is a large share of the adult female cohort that lived through the programme years. The political effect in Nuuk will depend on how fast the first payments land and on what Friday's reports say about intent. Copenhagen has now accepted a bill. It has not yet accepted the harshest legal word Greenland has put on the table.