Belgian court landmark ruling on colonial-era atrocities in Africa paves way for wider justice

The Belgian court’s landmark verdict of crimes against humanity for kidnapping of mixed-race children is hailed as a turning point that “surely opens the door” to those seeking financial compensation for forced separation from their parents and other colonial-era injustices.

In a landmark ruling in December, Belgium’s court of appeal decided that the “systematic kidnapping” of mixed-race children from their African mothers in Belgian-ruled Congo, Burundi and Rwanda was a crime against humanity. The legal battle lasting six years was launched by five women who were forcibly removed from their Congolese mothers as small children between 1948 and 1953 and placed in religious institutions and homes by Belgian authorities that ruled Congo. Known as “métis” back then, the five women, who now live in Belgium and France, were each awarded 50,000 euros in damages.

The court’s landmark ruling “surely opens the door” for wider justice when it comes to forced separations from parents and other colonial-era crimes against humanity, said the president of the Association of Métis of Belgium, François Milliex. “Most métis who were moved to Belgium regret that the state never proposed financial compensation for the suffering, the pain,” he added.

Although the apology by Belgium’s then prime minister, Charles Michel, in 2019 for the kidnapping of mixed-race children was hailed as a step in the right direction, the European country has resisted demands for financial compensation — unlike Australia, Canada and other states that have faced a reckoning for the similar treatment of its indigenous people.