For decades, the Belgian state offered words. It offered apologies, parliamentary resolutions, and official acknowledgements. What five Métis women born in the Belgian Congo between 1948 and 1952 wanted was something rather more concrete: accountability, and reparations.

On 22 May, the Belgian Court of Cassation gave it to them, rejecting the state’s appeal against a landmark 2024 Brussels Court of Appeal ruling that found Belgium responsible for crimes against humanity in its treatment of Métis children under colonial rule.

The five women, Marie-Josée Loshi, Noëlle Verbeken, Léa Tavares Mujinga, Simone Ngalula and Monique Bitu Bingi, were forcibly removed from their Congolese mothers as children, placed in religious institutions, stripped of their names, roots and identities, and abandoned when Congo gained independence in 1960. The Court of Appeal in 2024 found these acts constituted crimes against humanity. Belgium chose to contest that verdict before the highest court. It lost.

The ruling is historic for reasons that stretch beyond Belgium. It marks the first time a European state has been ordered to compensate victims of colonisation. It establishes in law what many have long argued in politics: that apologies and symbolic gestures do not discharge a state’s obligations under international law when those obligations extend to material reparation.

Rym Khadhraoui of Amnesty International said the ruling is a sign of hope for these five women and for everyone still fighting for reparations for colonial injustices across the world. Geneviève Kaninda of African Futures Lab was equally direct: former colonial powers cannot rely on recognition and apologies while denying survivors reparations commensurate with the scale of colonial violence they endured.

The organisations now call on Belgium to implement the judgment promptly, refrain from further delay, and adopt a comprehensive reparations framework for all Métis people and their mothers affected by Belgian colonial policies.

Sources: Amnesty International, African Futures Lab, Pan African Lawyers Union, Reform Initiatives joint statement (22 May 2026, Index EUR 14/1040/2026)