Africa-Press. The Belgian Court of Cassation has issued a final ruling condemning the Belgian state in the case of the kidnapping of mixed-race children during the Belgian colonial period in Congo.
In its ruling issued yesterday, the court rejected an appeal by the Belgian state against the initial ruling made in December 2024, which condemned Belgian authorities for forcibly taking children from their mothers during the colonial era.
Under the decision, Belgium will pay financial compensation to five affected women, amounting to 50,000 euros each.
Victims’ lawyer Michèle Hirsch stated that the ruling represents “the first condemnation of a European state for a crime against humanity committed during colonialism.”
The five women, who are over seventy years old, filed their complaint in 2020 seeking this compensation.
On December 2, 2024, the Brussels Court of Appeal overturned the first-instance ruling, stating that the facts do not fall under statutes of limitations.
The court described the systematic kidnapping of mixed-race children as a “crime against humanity” due to the targeting of children based on their ethnic origins.
This is the first legal case in Belgium highlighting the fate of mixed-race children born in former Belgian colonies, namely Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi.
Most of these children were not recognized by their white fathers and were considered belonging neither to the white community nor to the African community.
The five women were born between 1945 and 1950 as a result of relationships between white men and African women in the former Belgian Congo, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
When they were between two and four years old, they were forcibly taken from their maternal families and transferred to institutions often run by the Catholic Church.
The victims reported that they suffered abuse and violations within those institutions.
The Court of Appeal confirmed that the five women “were taken from their mothers without their consent before reaching the age of seven, as part of a systematic plan implemented by the Belgian state to seek out and kidnap mixed-race children.”
The court added that the targeting occurred “solely because of their origins.”
The Belgian government acknowledged in 2019 what it described as “targeted apartheid” faced by mixed-race children in former colonies.
Belgian authorities also admitted to the occurrence of “loss of identity” due to the separation of siblings from one another, including during the transfer of some children to Belgium after Congo’s independence.
