Ethnic Cleansing in Armed Conflict

Abstract ‘Ethnic cleansing’ — that is, the practice of removing a targeted group from a given geographical area — occupies an inherently liminal position in international criminal law. As its ultimate goal is the removal of the targeted population from a territory, it has often been qualified as deportation or forcible transfer, constituting war crimes or crimes against humanity. Given the extreme consequences for the targeted group, however, ethnic cleansing has at times been qualified as genocide by scholars and international criminal tribunals. Against this background, the present article addresses two related questions: first, under what conditions can acts of forced displacement amount to genocide; and secondly, how does the context of armed conflict complicate this assessment. To answer the first question, the article draws on the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals, mapping the conditions under which ethnic cleansing practiced through forced displacement may satisfy the actus reus and mens rea of genocide. The article’s contribution, however, lies not only in revisiting the relationship between forced displacement and genocide, but also in demonstrating how armed conflict creates a distinctive legal and evidentiary environment in which displacement-centred forms of genocide become particularly difficult to identify and legally qualify. Thus, on the second question, the article argues that armed conflict introduces structural distortions that systematically complicate the assessment of genocide committed through practices of ethnic cleansing. First, the conditions of war blur the line between displacing and destroying a group, complicating the evaluation of the actus reus. Secondly, the incremental temporality of military operations enables genocidal intent to hide behind the veil of war strategies and rhetoric, making its evidentiary isolation particularly elusive. Thirdly, the dominant interpretation of genocidal intent tends to limit it to the intent to destroy a protected group in its physical or biological dimension, systematically obscuring displacement-centred forms of collective destruction, such as ethnic cleansing, typically taking place in armed conflict. The article therefore concludes by arguing that a reading of genocide capable of embracing such forms of group obliteration is not an expansion of the crime, but a faithful application of its definition.