The Danish Institute for Human Rights says the Greenland spiral case no longer needs to be settled in court, now that the Folketing’s compensation scheme is in place. Director Louise Holck maintains that human rights were violated.
According to reporting by DR, Louise Holck, director of Institut for Menneskerettigheder, no longer sees a need for a trial. She points to the compensation scheme adopted by the Danish parliament for the affected Greenlandic women.
Holck told DR that her assessment has not changed. She says accounts from the women she has met show that human rights were breached, and she appeals for the women to be left in peace and compensated.
The institute previously backed the women in full. In 2024, when a case involving 143 Greenlandic women against the Danish state was still expected, the institute asked Østre Landsret for permission to intervene. It assessed that the women had been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment in breach of several international conventions.
Two reports, two conclusions
Holck’s position is now questioned by her predecessor at the institute, Jonas Christoffersen. He co-authored one of two recently published reports on the human rights aspects of the case, together with psychologist Jensine Nedergaard, an external lecturer at Aalborg University.
The two argue in a piece in Politiken that there is no factual basis for concluding that many IUD insertions breached the women’s human rights. They note that different consent rules applied in the 1960s and 1970s, and that violations require an individual assessment. In their report they use the term involuntary consent, which they say could still be lawful.
The other report, by Miriam Cullen of the University of Copenhagen and political scientist Dalee Sambo Dorough, reaches the opposite conclusion. They find that contraception was given without valid consent as part of medical practice in Greenland from 1966 at the latest, causing harm amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment. That breaches Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 7 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Naalakkersuisut stated when the reports were published that only the Cullen and Dorough report meets the terms of reference for the investigation. Reuters reported on August 28, 2026 that the two reports reached conflicting legal conclusions on the question of genocide. Sermitsiaq noted that one report found no empirical basis for a genocide conclusion.
The Ministry of the Interior and Health offered the women settlements in December and established a compensation arrangement. Nordjyske reported that the Folketing approved 300,000 kroner per woman on August 27, 2026.
DR reports that the first women have had their cases assessed by Patienterstatningen and have received the payment. Holck notes that 300,000 kroner is typically what would be awarded at the European Court of Human Rights. She says the law spares the women a long path through the Danish courts and then Strasbourg.
