In 2024, the National Medical Board announced that they were aware of 15 cases of women who had received an IUD or other contraceptive without their knowledge or consent after the repatriation of the health sector in 1992.
However, a total of 209 people have applied for financial compensation from the self-government.
This is stated by the Ministry of Industry, Mineral Resources, Energy, Justice and Equality in a press release.
Of the 209 applicants, 111 are being processed. This means that health record information for a total of 111 women must be retrieved.
92 of the applicants have had their applications rejected, as their incidents occurred before Greenland took over the healthcare sector. This means that it is the Danish state that they must seek compensation from. The status of the remaining six applications is not clear.
Additional funding secured
On February 3, the Minister of Justice of Greenland, Naaja H. Nathanielsen, said that the processing of the compensation cases would take longer than expected.
This is because significantly more applications have been received than first expected, and that the geographical location of the reported incidents is spread over large parts of the country. This means that more records must be obtained, which takes longer than initially estimated.
In addition, the Minister of Justice has had to secure additional funding for the payment of compensation. Originally, 4.5 million kroner was allocated in the Finance Act, which would correspond to 300,000 kroner per woman if there were 15 cases.
- The large number of applications shows that even after the reintegration of the health service, there has been a practice of giving women contraception without their knowledge or consent. The applications will now be processed, and after that work is completed, we will have more information about when the incidents occurred and where they occurred.
- This is valuable information in our efforts to fully understand this case, says Naaja H. Nathanielsen in the press release.
At the end of January, the Greenland Government received the results of the investigation into the human rights aspects of the IUD case, which the Greenland Government initiated in 2024. The report must be translated before it is published.
