Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 82

January 2006

Hingitaq 53 and Others v. Denmark (dec.) - 18584/04

Decision 12.1.2006 [Section I]

Article 1 of Protocol No. 1

Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1

Deprivation of property

Forced relocation of members of the Inughuit tribe on Greenland in the 1950s and related compensation award: inadmissible

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for home

Forced relocation of members of the Inughuit tribe on Greenland in the 1950s: inadmissible

Facts : The applicants are over 400 individuals from the Thule District in Greenland, and Hingitaq 53, a group that represented the interests of relocated Inughuit (the Thule Tribe) and their descendants in a legal action against the Danish Government. The Thule District was incorporated into the Danish colonial area in Greenland in 1921. After World War II Denmark and the USA signed a treaty on the defence of Greenland, which was approved by the Danish Parliament in 1951. Consequently, an American air base was established amidst the applicants’ hunting areas and in the vicinity of the applicants’ native village site, Uummannaq (then called Thule). As part of the base an airstrip was built, together with housing and facilities intended to accommodate 4,000 people. In 1953 the US Government requested permission to expand the base to cover the whole Dundas Peninsula. The request was granted, with the consequence that the Thule Tribe was evicted and had to settle outside the defence area. Within days, twenty ‑six Inuit families left Uummannaq, leaving behind their houses, a hospital, a school, a radio station, warehouses, a church and a graveyard. Most of the families chose to move to Qaanaaq, more than 100 km north of Uummannaq, where they lived in tents until substitute housing was built for them.

In 1953 a new Danish Constitution was passed which extended to all parts of the Danish Kingdom, including Greenland, which thus became an integral part of Denmark. In 1954 the United Nations General Assembly approved the constitutional integration of Greenland into the Danish Realm and deleted Greenland from the list of non-self-governing territories. In 1959 and 1960 the Thule Tribe requested the Ministry for Greenland to grant compensation for the relocation of the tribe but never received a decision. In 1979 home rule was introduced in Greenland, a scheme which left most of the important decision ‑making, excluding the areas of foreign policy and defence, to the Home Rule Government. In 1985 the Thule Tribe lodged a fresh claim for compensation. This even tually led, among other things, to the building of new houses instead of the original houses from the 1950s, and to an agreement between the Danish Government and the Home Rule Government to improve the conditions for the Thule municipality in order to remedy the inconveniences resulting from the existence of the military base. The plan was implemented in the period 1985-1986 and in 1986 the US and Denmark entered into an agreement reducing the area of the base to almost half its original size. In 1987 the Minister of Justice set up a review committee to submit a report establishing the facts of the Thule Tribe’s relocation in 1953. In 1997 the Danish Government agreed to donate a substantial amount of money towards the cost of a new airport in Thule. In 1999 the Danish Prime Minister formally apologised to the applicants for the forced relocation of the Inughuit in 1953.

In the meantime, in 1996, the applicants brought a case against the Prime Minister’s Office before a High Court, seeking declarations that they had the right to live in and use their native settlement in Uummannaq/Dundas in the Thule District and that they had the right to move, stay and hunt in the entire Thule District; and seeking compensation both for the Thule Tribe and individual members of the tribe. In 1999 the High Court, having found that the applicants’ claims had not become time-barred, dismissed the claims in so far as a declaratory judgment had been sought, but granted compensation to the tribe and individual members. The court noted that the Thule Air Base had been legally established under the 1951 Defence Treaty, the adoption and content of which had been in accordance with Danish law; that the population at the relevant time could be regarded as a tribal people as this concept was now defined in the International Labour Organisation’s Convention no. 169 of 1989 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries; that the substantial restriction of access to hunting and fishing caused by the establishment of the Thule Air Base in 1951 and the eviction of the tribe from the Thule District in May 1953 had amounted to such serious interferences that they had to be regarded as expropriations; that the tribe had been afforded too little time to prepare their departure; that expropriations could be carried out in Greenland at the relevant time without statutory authority; but that at the relevant time, pursuant to Article 73 of the UN Charter, the Danish Government had had international obligations towards Greenland.

The High Court awarded the tribe DKK 500,000 (equivalent to approximately EUR 66,000) in compensation for its eviction and loss of hunting rights in the Thule District. In addition, applicants who at the relevant time had been at least 18 years of age were granted some EUR 3,000 in compensation. Those who had been between 4 and 18 years old were granted approximately EUR 2,000 in compensation for non-pecuniary damage. In 2003 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the High Court’s judgment.

Law: Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and Article 8 of the Convention (interferences occurring in the 1950s) –The applicants had maintained that they had, on a continuing basis, been deprived of their homeland and hunting territories and denied the opportunity to use, peacefully enjoy, develop and control their land. The Court considered however that the interferences in the present case had consisted, firstly, in the substantial restriction of Inughuit access to hunting and fishing as a result of the establishment of the Thule Air Base in 1951 and, secondly, in the relocation of the population from their settlement in Uummannaq in May 1953. Deprivation of ownership or of another right in rem is in principle an instantaneous act and does not produce a continuing situation. Moreover, the Convention only governs, for each Contracting Party, facts subsequent to its entry into force with respect to that Party.As regards Denmark, the Convention entered into force in September 1953 and Protocol No. 1 in May 1954. Accordingly, the Court had no jurisdiction: incompatible ratione temporis .

Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (outcome of court proceedings 1996-2003 ) – In their judgments of 1999 and 2003 the Danish courts had found that both the substantial restriction of access to hunting and fishing as a result of the establishment of the Thule Air Base in 1951 and the intervention in the Uummannaq settlement and the Thule colony in connection with the decision in 1953 to move the population had to be considered acts of expropriation carried out in the public interest, which at the relevant time had been legal and valid. That had not been an arbitrary interpretation of the High Court and the Supreme Court and it was primarily for the national authorities, notably the courts, to interpret and apply domestic law.

Both the High Court and the Supreme Court had found that the applicants’ claims for compensation had not become time-barred and that owing to the Danish authorities’ failure in the past to examine and specify the loss suffered, the burden of proof for the loss incurred had to be eased. The courts had taken into account, on the one hand, the fact that the relocation of the population of Uummannaq had been decided and carried out in such a way and under such circumstances that it had constituted a serious interference and unlawful conduct towards them. On the other hand, in 1953 substitute housing and various other facilities had been built for the families. Eventually the Thule Tribe had been granted DKK 500,000 in compensation for its eviction and loss of hunting rights and individual applicants had been granted compensation for non-pecuniary damage. Furthermore, at some time after 1985 new houses had been built in Qaanaaq instead of the original houses from the 1950s; in 1986 the US and Denmark had entered into an agreement reducing the area of the base to almost half its original size; and in 1997 the Danish Government had agreed to donate DKK 47,000,000 toward the cost of a new airport in Thule. Against this background, the Court found that the national authorities had struck a fair balance between the proprietary interests of the persons concerned: manifestly ill-founded.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes