Justina Inusuglok was born in 1958 in Iginniarfik, a small village on Greenland's west coast, where only 73 people lived at the time of the last census in 2017. Since August 2024, for 2,000 krone (€270) a month, she has rented a tiny room with barely enough space for a bed and a table in a container complex on the outskirts of Nuuk, the island's capital. She shares the toilet and kitchen with the other tenants, almost all men who, like her, have seen their lives derailed.

Sitting on the worn-out sofa in the overheated common room, the petite woman with a sad smile told her story: she used to be a caregiver in an orphanage in Sisimiut, Greenland's second largest city. She had a son. When he was 19, he committed suicide. Things went downhill from there and Inusuglok started drinking, before eventually quitting in 2004. "Since then, I haven't had a drop of alcohol or smoked a cigarette," she said proudly. But she never worked again, living on a small pension and staying with friends.

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