A court has ordered Belgium to pay millions of dollars in compensation to five mixed-race women who were forcibly taken from their homes in the Belgian Congo as children, under a colonial-era practice that judges said was a “crime against humanity”.

The landmark ruling on Monday by the Brussels Court of Appeal came after years of legal battle by the aggrieved women. It sets a historic precedent for state-sanctioned abductions that saw thousands of children kidnapped from today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo because of their racial makeup.

An earlier ruling from a lower court in 2021 rejected the women’s claims.

However, the Appeals court on Monday ordered the Belgian state to “compensate the appellants for the moral damage resulting from the loss of their connection to their mothers and the damage to their identity and their connection to their original environment”.  The five women will receive 250,000 euros ($267,000) combined.

Monique Bitu Bingi (71), one of the women who brought the case in 2020, told Al Jazeera she was satisfied with the ruling.

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“I am very happy that justice has finally been delivered to us,” she said. ” And I’m happy that this was termed a crime against humanity.”

Here’s what to know about the case, and why the court ruling is historic:

In this June 29, 2020 file photo, clockwise from top left: Simone Ngalula, Monique Bitu Bingi, Lea Tavares Mujinga, Noelle Verbeeken and Marie-Jose Loshi [File: Francisco Seco/AP]

Why were the women kidnapped?

The five plaintiffs, including Bitu Bingi, were among an estimated 5,000 to 20,000 mixed-race children who were snatched from their mothers in the former Belgian Congo (today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo) and forcibly taken to faraway cities, or, in some cases, shipped to Belgium for adoption.

Following the violent rule of King Leopold II, which resulted in the deaths and mutilations of millions of Congolese, the Belgian state took over the occupation and continued to operate an immensely exploitative system over the colony between 1908 and 1960.

Belgium also controlled the then Ruanda-Urundi, or today’s Rwanda and Burundi, where hundreds, if not thousands of bi-racial children were also taken.

Now called Metis, a French term meaning ‘mixed’, the children were kidnapped between 1948 and 1961, in the lead-up to Congo’s independence.

Belgian colonial authorities believed that bi-racial children threatened the white supremacy narrative they had continually pushed and that they used to justify colonialism, experts say.

“They were feared because their mere existence was shaking the very foundations of this racial theory that was at the core of the colonial project,” Delphine Lauwers, an archivist and historian at the State Archives of Belgium told Al Jazeera.

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Authorities systematically discriminated against the children and referred to them as “children of sin”. While white Belgian men were not legally allowed to marry African women, such interracial unions existed. Some children were also born to women as a result of rape, in situations where African housekeepers were treated as concubines.

Catholic missions were key to the abductions. From a young age, bi-racial children were snatched or coerced away from their mothers and sent to orphanages or missionaries, some in Congo or Belgium. The state justified the practice based on a colonial-era law that allowed for the confinement of bi-racial children to state or religious institutions.

Some of the Belgian fathers refused to acknowledge paternity – because they were from supposedly reputable homes – and so, in many cases, the children were declared to be orphaned or without known fathers.

Colonial authorities also changed the children’s names, first so they would not affect their father’s reputation, and also so the children would not be able to connect with their family members. It was not until 1959, when the three colonies were near attaining independence, that the kidnapping and shipping of children from the region began to abate.

In Belgium, some of the children were not accepted because of their mixed backgrounds. Some never received Belgian nationality and became stateless. Metis said they were treated as third-class citizens in Belgium for a long time. Most of those affected can still not access their birth records or find their parents.

A bust of Belgium former King Leopold II that has been daubed with red paint is removed by a city worker in Auderghem, near Brussels, on June 12, 2020 as several statues of the late monarch, a symbol of Belgium’s bloody history as a colonial power in central Africa, have been defaced [File: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP]

Has Belgium apologised for the kidnappings?

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In March 2018, the Belgian parliament passed a resolution recognising that there had been a policy of targeted segregation and forced abductions of mixed-race children in former Belgian colonies, and that redress was needed.

Lawmakers ordered the Belgian state to investigate what means of repair would be proportional for the African mothers who had had their children stolen from them, and to the bi-racial children who had been harmed for life as a result.

A year later, in 2019, the then Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel apologised for the colonial practice, saying Belgium had stripped the children of their identity, stigmatised them, and split up families.

In his statement, Michel pledged that “this solemn moment will represent a further step towards awareness and recognition of this part of our national history.”

However, Michel stopped short of naming the crimes of forced abductions. Experts say that was because it would have major repercussions for the state, which would then be forced to possibly pay reparations to thousands of people.

Although rights groups pushed Belgium to take the apology a step further, the government did not budge.

People walking in the village of the Brussels International Exposition, World’s Fair, Belgium, 1935; the theme of the World’s Fair was colonisation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Congo Free State [Herbert Felton/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]

What led to the court case?

In 2020, a group of five female Metis, including Bitu Bingi, sued Belgium on charges of crimes against humanity and demanded 50,000 euros ($52,550) each in compensation.

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It was historic – the first such case seeking justice for Metis and forcing Belgium to address a set of atrocities linked to its brutal colonial past in Africa. The other plaintiffs are Lea Tavares Mujinga, Simone Vandenbroecke Ngalula, Noelle Verbeken and Marie Jose Loshi.

The women, who refer to themselves as sisters, also demanded that the state produce any documents identifying them, such as letters, telegrams, or registers, to trace their origins.

All are between 70 and 80 years old. They were forcibly taken to the same mission in the country’s Kasai province when they were babies, far from their separate villages. In the mission, the girls grew close and lived with other bi-racial people.

The women said they were treated as outcasts in the mission. They said they did not have enough food and had to gather sweet potato leaves for food.

When Kasai descended into tribal unrest before the Congolese independence announcement in 1960, the missionaries abandoned the girls, along with some 60 other children, and fled to Belgium.

Fighters from the Bakwa Luntu tribe were ordered by the new Congolese state to watch over them. Instead, the men sexually mutilated the girls. Eventually, the women grew up and left, emigrating to France. The trauma, they said, remained.

“When this kind of love is taken away from children, they’re going to carry that scar for the rest of their lives,” Bitu Bingi told Al Jazeera. “It’s something that cannot be healed like other scars.”

In 2021, the case proceedings began. Lawyers representing Belgium argued in hearings in a Brussels civil court that the abductions at the time were legal and that the case should have been brought up a long time ago. Too much time had passed, they claimed.

Lawyer Michele Hirsch, who represents the women, pushed back, saying the trauma was being passed on from one generation to another. “If they are fighting for this crime to be recognised, it is for their children, their grandchildren… We ask you to name the crime and to condemn the Belgian State,” Hirsch appealed to the judges.

The court, in December 2021, however, ruled that the Belgian state was not guilty of crimes against humanity and that the policy was to be seen within the context of European colonialism.

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How did the court rule on Monday?

The women immediately appealed the civil court’s ruling. Subsequent hearings went on between 2022 and 2024.

In the appeal hearings, the women again testified to the abuse they had faced. “The Belgian state uprooted us, cut us off from our people. It stole our childhood, our lives, our first names, our surnames, our identities, and our human rights,” Lea Tavares Mujinga, one of the plaintiffs said in court.

Finally, on Monday, December 2, the Appeals Court delivered its ruling.

In its judgement, the court recognised that the Belgian state was responsible for abduction and systematic racial segregation, and ordered that the amount each woman requested be paid.

It is the first such ruling of its kind, and experts say it might have implications for other European states which also committed numerous crimes during colonialism, amid loud calls for reparations.

Nicolas Angelet, a second lawyer who represented the women, told Al Jazeera that the ruling could see more affected Metis seek justice in court. A preemptive out-of-court settlement for anyone affected by the discriminatory colonial-era policies could save both the state and potential plaintiffs some time, he said.

For now, the legal team is “extremely happy” with Monday’s judgement, Angelet added, but noted that the Belgian side could still appeal to the Supreme Court.

“It hasn’t ended entirely yet,” he said. “But we feel ready and confident … and we can already enforce this judgement immediately, even if they do go to court.”

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