A dark page in the history of Northern Europe finally finds partial economic recognition. The Danish parliament has approved a law granting compensation of 300 thousand Danish crowns (around 40 thousand euros) to each of the Greenlandic women affected by non-consensual sterilizations and contraception.
The operation, known as the Danish Coil Campaign, has been carried out by Copenhagen since the 1960s to contain the demographic growth of the native population and reduce public spending on social services. The health system, managed directly by Denmark until 1992, applied the intrauterine spiral to over 4,000 girls and women, mainly of the Inuit ethnic group. The practice continued even after the handover of healthcare to the local authorities.
Naja Lyberth’s courageous battle
Naja Lyberth, a Greenlandic psychologist and activist, broke the silence on this drama. In 2017, Lyberth publicly reported that he had had the device forcibly implanted in 1976, at the age of just 14, without any consent from himself or his parents, following a routine school medical check-up.
Her testimony paved the way for a real legal battle: in October 2023, Naja Lyberth and 66 other women launched a class action lawsuit against the Danish government, demanding compensation of 5.7 million euros for human rights violations. The case then took on international relevance in 2022 thanks to the podcast’s journalistic investigation Spiralkampagnen produced by the broadcaster DR.
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Health consequences and political reactions
The devices were placed on often unaware teenagers, causing devastating consequences: internal bleeding, abdominal infections, chronic pain and ectopic pregnancies. For many victims the only solution was a hysterectomy, with the removal of the uterus and permanent loss of fertility. The drastic drop in the birth rate brought the island’s fertility rate from 7 children per woman to 2.3 between 1966 and 1974.
Recently, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen issued an official apology to Nuuk on behalf of Denmark. The approval of the measure saw the support of the Greenlandic deputies Naaja H. Nathanielsen and Qarsoq Høegh-Dam, while the Prime Minister of Greenland Jens-Frederik Nielsen called for the creation of a National Reconciliation Commission, defining the compensations as too late.
The shadow of human rights violations
The conclusions of two independent commissions of inquiry published in Greenland confirm that the forced contraceptive policy constitutes a clear violation of human rights. The heated legal debate on the definition of genocide remains open, a thesis supported in 2024 by the former head of the Greenlandic government Múte Bourup Egede. Currently, 201 women have submitted a formal request for compensation, but investigations continue to shed light on one of the most serious demographic engineering interventions perpetrated in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century.
