{"id":647,"date":"2021-12-08T08:48:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T08:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/?p=647"},"modified":"2026-06-10T14:21:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:21:40","slug":"l-m-et-al-v-kingdom-of-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/?p=647","title":{"rendered":"L., M. et al. v Kingdom of Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h6><strong><strong>Brussels First Instance Tribunal, L., M. et al. v Kingdom of Belgium, Nr. 20\/4655\/A, 8 December 2021<\/strong><\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n<p>This case revolves around a claim issued by 5 people with Congolese roots against the Belgian state in connection with Belgium\u2019s colonial past in Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All claimants had been committed into a religious institute and hence separated from their family as children between 1948 and 1961. At the time, placing <em>M\u00e9tis<\/em> (mixed-race parentage) children &nbsp;in religious institutes was routine practice. The claimants\u2019 position that this segregation epitomized a crime against humanity, based on which they were entitled to compensation, was, however, held to be unfounded. Having regard to the principle of legality, the Tribunal rather found that the placement of people in such religious institutions for racial reasons did not amount to a crime against humanity at the time. Acknowledging that the concept of crimes against humanity had gradually broadened over time, however, the court added that if these actions were to occur today, they would likely be seen as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-file\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/id_ehjbcstm.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button\" download>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels First Instance Tribunal, L., M. et al. v Kingdom of Belgium, Nr. 20\/4655\/A, 8 December 2021 This case revolves around a claim issued by 5 people with Congolese roots against the Belgian state in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37],"tags":[70,68,113,59,58],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilbc.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}