Greenlandic women victims of violence

One out of five women in Greenland are affected by violence and more than 10 per cent of Greenlanders make a complaint about violence to police every year. The majority of these are women.

That was startling information that Else Poulsen, a Greenlandic psychologist, recently delivered to a conference on equality in Nuuk.

“We take it very seriously,” Johan Lund Olsen, the minister for social equality in Greenland, told her.

Approximately 5.5 per cent of Greenlandic women report rape or rape attempt, while nine per cent of Greenlanders under 19 reported an attempted sexual assault.

According to Poulsen, the reported numbers are probably only a small percentage of the actual numbers.