Denmark to compensate Greenland women

Copenhagen (dpa) — Around 4,500 Greenland women will be eligible for payments of 300,000 Danish kroner ($47,000) if intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUDs) were implanted in them without consent, the Health Ministry announced in Copenhagen on Wednesday.

The Danish government and a broad parliamentary majority have reached agreement providing financial compensation to those affected by the scandal.

The women, who had the IUDs implanted without their knowledge over the years 1960-91, will be able to apply for the compensation from April next year. The payments will be made later in the year.

The ministry described the forced contraception as “a dark chapter in the joint history of Denmark and Greenland” associated with great personal cost to the women of Greenland.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen expressed the Danish state’s formal apologies at a ceremony on the autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark in September.

Danish doctors implanted thousands of the contraceptive devices, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s without first securing their consent. Some were just 12 years old, according to Danish human rights activists.

Danish authorities are suspected of trying to limit population growth in Greenland. Denmark was responsible for health policy in the territory up to 1992. Greenland is now largely autonomous.