The Concept of the Civilian: Legal Recognition, Adjudication and the Trials of International Criminal Justice

How do international war crimes trials address and redress the civilian victims of armed conflict? The Concept of the Civilian examines how the processes of international criminal justice construct legal recognition of the civilian victims of contemporary armed conflicts.

Drawing on a detailed case-study of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), this book examines two key issues central to these justice processes. Firstly, how civilians are understood as a social and legal category of persons; and secondly, how legal practices shape victim identities and redress in relation to these persons.

Combining socio-legal concepts and methodologies with insights from transitional justice scholarship, Claire Garbett thus traces the historical emergence of the concept of the civilian, and critically examines how the different stages of legal proceedings produce its conceptual form in distinction from that of combatants.

This book shows that the very notions of ‘civilian’, ‘protection’ and ‘redress’ that underpin current practices of international criminal justice continue to evoke both definitional difficulties and analytic contestation. Accordingly, it remains unclear how the practices of international criminal justice work to address and redress the civilian victims of contemporary armed conflicts.