Danish treatment of Greenlandic mother may be ‘ethnic discrimination’, says UN

The United Nations has warned Denmark that the treatment of a Greenlandic mother whose newborn child was removed by Danish authorities as a result of controversial parenting competency tests “may amount to ethnic discrimination”. Keira Alexandra Kronvold’s daughter, Zammi, was taken away from her when she was two hours old and placed in foster care in November 2024 after Kronvold was subjected to so-called FKU (parental competence) psychometric tests. At the time, she was told that the test was to see if she was “civilised enough”. On Friday, Kronvold, whose case prompted widespread outrage and contributed to Denmark’s subsequent decision to ban the use of such tests, will go to the Danish high court in the latest attempt to win back custody of her child. She is understood to be one of dozens of Inuit women living in Denmark who remain separated from their children after undergoing the discredited tests. In a move that will raise pressure on Copenhagen, it has now emerged that Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, has written to the government asking it to answer questions about the treatment of Kronvold and other families with a Greenlandic background. Alsalem, who wrote the letter along with the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, said on Thursday she and her colleagues had reason to believe that “that violations of human rights have occurred”. …