Greenland, the Lansing Declaration, and the 1916 Treaty

The Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice (SCILJ) invites you to a seminar with Shelley A.H. Moorhead on "Greenland, the Lansing Declaration, and the 1916 Treaty: A living treaty dispute with a bearing on Nordic security policy".

On 4 August 1916, the same day the treaty concerning the Danish West Indies was signed, the then U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing issued a declaration that the United States would not object to Danish sovereignty over Greenland. Denmark ceded the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; in return, the United States recognised Denmark’s interests in the Arctic. According to ACRRA this was no side note but a condition of Denmark’s ratification, confirmed in a formal exchange of notes — a single instrument with two halves, in which Greenland and the Virgin Islands are joined in one and the same document.

It is that connection that makes the question urgent today. As Greenland has once again moved to the forefront of Washington’s ambitions, ACRRA contends that the United States has repudiated the Lansing Declaration — through Vice President Vance’s and President Trump’s statements at Pituffik on 28 March 2025 (”not relying on Denmark or anybody else”) and Trump’s written message to Norway’s Prime Minister on 19 January 2026, which denied that there exists any written instrument establishing Danish sovereignty over Greenland. On ACRRA’s legal theory, the entire 1916 framework has thereby been reopened as a living treaty dispute. The question the seminar poses: if the undertaking concerning Greenland can be repudiated, what becomes of the half that concerns the Virgin Islands — and what responsibility follows for Denmark if the instrument still stands?

Shelley A.H. Moorhead stands at the intersection of those two halves, having pursued proceedings relating to both governments: against the United States concerning its conduct in relation to the Lansing Declaration through Petition P-769-25 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and in relation to Denmark concerning its continuing obligations towards the people of the Virgin Islands, with claims simultaneously before the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and an application to the European Court of Human Rights prepared and pending exhaustion of available remedies. Grounded in treaty law and state succession, the seminar shows why this is no longer history but a question with a direct bearing on Nordic security policy at a time when the Arctic has once again become a matter of great-power politics.

About the speaker

Shelley A.H. Moorhead is one of the leading voices in the international reparations movement and one of the foremost authorities on the legal, diplomatic, and historical questions surrounding the 1916 Treaty concerning the Danish West Indies. He served as Minister of State for External Affairs of the U.S. Virgin Islands from 2015 to 2017 and previously as Secretary-General of the Inter-Virgin Islands Council, where he worked on intergovernmental cooperation and regional affairs. He is the founder and President of the African-Caribbean Reparations and Resettlement Alliance (ACRRA), an associate member of the CARICOM Reparations Commission. He has spoken before, among others, the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation, the African Union, and the Danish Parliament (Folketinget), and has lectured at universities across the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, including the University of Copenhagen.

Registration

SCILJ appreciates your registration at scilj@juridicum.su.se before September 7th.