On Knife's Edge: The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's Impact on Violence Against Civilians

The post-Cold War era has witnessed unspeakable atrocities against civilians. In the Bosnian War alone, tens of thousands of civilians perished, not accounting for wider traumas wrought by the bombings of major cities and rampant sexual violence. In establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and a subsequent generation of international criminal tribunals (ICTs), members of the international community sought to craft devices that could curb such atrocities and perhaps break the cycles of violence that perpetuate them. And yet, by holding out the threat of criminal prosecution, ICTs could potentially delay the end of hostilities as parties hold out for immunity, or even trigger violent retaliation. Over twenty years after the creation of the first post-Cold War ICT, we still know very little about wartime ICTs' actual impact.;My dissertation explains how and when the ICTY affected combatant groups' use of violence against non-combatants. I focus on the ICTY given its extensive and varied involvement in conflicts that have run their course. There is also an abundance of reliable, longitudinal data for these cases, which does not yet exist for others. Drawing on a wealth of interview (roughly 200 semi-structured interviews) and archival data collected in The Hague and throughout Southeast Europe, I find that ICTY played a key role in de-escalating violence against civilians. It marginalized spoilers and created costs for conflict participants. The Tribunal also provided mediators with an important source of leverage. However, ICTY officials were only able to de-escalate one-sided violence in these ways when they: (1) secured cooperation on enforcement tasks from influential actors, and/or (2) confronted combatant leaders who perceived few ex ante benefits in deploying violence against non-combatants. Importantly, the study found no evidence that the ICTY escalated violence against civilians during the wars associated with the break-up of Yugoslavia.;With the permanent International Criminal Court, the threat of criminal prosecution now extends to modern-day conflicts. It is thus essential that we begin to understand how and when ICTs might actually contribute to limiting violence against civilians. My research on the ICTY is an important step forward in this effort.