On 2 December 2024, the Brussels Court of Appeal delivered a historic judgment recognizing the Belgian State's responsibility for the abduction and systematic racial segregation of Métis children under Belgian colonial rule, acts the Court qualified as crimes against humanity.
Rather than accept this landmark ruling and take a first step towards meaningful reparations, the Belgian State chose to challenge it before the Court of Cassation. Today, African Futures Lab, Amnesty International (external link), Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) (external link) and Reform Initiatives (external link)welcome the Court of Cassation's decision to reject that appeal, confirming Belgium's accountability for colonial-era crimes against humanity and the right of victims to reparation.
The case was brought by five Métis women born in the Belgian Congo between 1948 and 1952 - Marie-Josée Loshi, Noëlle Verbeken, Léa Tavares Mujinga, Simone Ngalula and Monique Bitu Bingi - who were forcibly removed from their Congolese mothers, placed in religious institutions, deprived of their families, names, roots and identities, and later abandoned at the time of Congo's independence in 1960.
This ruling marks a decisive victory for them, for all Métis survivors and their mothers. whose decades-long struggle has exposed the racial, gendered and colonial violence at the heart of Belgium's policy towards Métis children and their mothers.
"Today's ruling represents a sign of hope for these five brave women and everyone still fighting for reparations for colonial injustices across the world. It is also a reminder to Belgium and other European states that they cannot evade their obligations under international law to reckon with and repair the ongoing legacies of European colonialism" said Rym Khadhraoui, Amnesty International.
Today's decision is not only a legal victory. It is also a historical and political one. It confirms that, for the first time, a European State has been ordered to compensate victims of colonization. It also confirms that Belgium cannot, on the one hand, acknowledge the fate of Métis children and their African mothers through official apologies and parliamentary resolutions and, on the other, fight survivors in court when that recognition leads to legal accountability and reparations.
"This decision sends a clear message: former colonial powers cannot rely on recognition, apologies or symbolic gestures while denying survivors reparations commensurate with the scale of the colonial violence they endured" said Geneviève Kaninda, at African Futures Lab.
African Futures Lab, Amnesty International, Pan African Lawyers Union and Reform Initiatives therefore call on the Belgian State to:
1. fully and promptly implement the judgment;
2. refrain from any further delay in providing reparations to the survivors;
3. adopt a comprehensive reparations framework for Métis people and their Mothers affected by Belgian colonial policies