The Inuit community still faces alarming discrimination in Denmark: children forcibly removed from their families after biased parenting tests.

Photo by Palle Knudsen on pexels.com 

Denmark is, once again, making the headlines for violating Greenlanders’ rights through the forceful removal of their babies, after the administration of biased parental tests to assess “whether they were fit to be parents”. 

The tests mentioned above, known as FKU (forældrekompetenceundersøgelse), were, in fact, banned earlier this year in May, after decades of harsh criticism by Danish human rights groups. Indeed, such examinations are perceived as biased towards people from an Inuit background, the indigenous inhabitants of Greenland. Indeed, as highlighted by the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the tests aren’t adapted to the target group, which means that cultural differences are not taken into account during the evaluation. Moreover, these tests are administered in Danish, rather than in Kalaallisut, the native language of the Inuit community. 

Essentially, the whole design is centred on Danish cultural norms, leading to alarming outcomes: “in Denmark, 7 percent of children who were themselves born in Greenland, and 5 percent of children with at least one parent born in Greenland, are placed outside the home, compared to 1 percent of other children in Denmark”. 

This issue originates from the colonial history of the island, when cultural assimilation - and, on the other hand, culture annihilation - particularly through christianization, were at the centre of the Danish colonial policies. In 1979, Greenland was granted Home Rule, marking a significant step towards more autonomy and independence from the Danish government; this process proceeded further through the Self-Government Act of 2009, which recognized Greenlanders “as a distinct people under international law with the right to self-determination”.

However, despite these achievements, it is evident that considerable challenges remain, and the discrimination perpetrated through the parental test is an example of such.  

As a matter of fact, Ivana Nikoline Brønlund, born in Nuuk to Greenlandic parents, had her daughter taken away one hour after being born, on the 11th of August, when the law banning parental test had already been enforced. The tests started in April and ended in June: three weeks before giving birth, Brønlund was notified that her daughter would have been taken away. The protests and criticism that followed led to the Danish Social Appeals Board ruling the forced removal as based on an incorrect basis, allowing the return of the child to her birth mother. 

Nonetheless, this is not an isolated case of forced removal of Inuit children from their families, and the issue remains for all the other cases - 300 in total - that were supposed to be reviewed by the government after the new law was passed. Today, only ten cases have been reviewed, but no Inuit child has been returned to their family. 

This is just one of the many discriminations that the Inuit community has been facing for decades; the Danish Prime Minister herself, Mette Frederiksen, recently apologised for the reiterated failures of the government, stating that “Greenlandic people have been systematically treated differently and inferiorly than other citizens of the kingdom”. 

The Inuit parents demanding to have their case reviewed and their children returned must be acknowledged and supported by the Danish government, which still has not entered a positive trajectory regarding the relations with the indigenous communities.

written by Alice Scotti