5 women win reparations from Belgium for crimes committed under colonial rule

On 2 December, the Belgian courts marked a major turning point by finding the Belgian state guilty of crimes against humanity for the treatment inflicted on mixed-race children under colonial-rule. Five mixed-race women, born to a black mother and a white father in the former Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), won an appeal against the Belgian state.

Simone Ngalula, Monique Bitu Bingi, Léa Tavares Mujinga, Noelle Verbeeken and Marie-José Loshi denounced inhumane acts, including their forced abduction from their mothers, their placement in religious institutions, within a system of racial segregation, and their abandonment to their fate at the time of the country's independence.

The plaintiffs' case was dismissed in 2021, but they have appealed with the support of a team of lawyers and human rights activists. The recent ruling by the Brussels Court of Appeal found that these practices constitued crimes against humanity: " They were taken from their respective mothers without their consent, before the age of seven, by the Belgian State in execution of a plan for the systematic search for and abduction of children born to a black mother and a white father, raised by their mother in the Belgian Congo, only because of their origins. "

The five women will receive 50,000 euros in compensation, a symbolic amount given the harm they suffered. The Court of Appeal's decision is not only limited to individual recognition for the five plaintiffs. It sets an important precedent in Belgium and Europe in terms of state responsibility for colonial crimes and fight against impunity.