Prosecuting ethnic cleansing and mass atrocity in the former Yugoslavia and Darfur

This paper argues that the occurrence of ethnic cleansing can be effectively documented through a mixture of social scientific criminological and legal evidence, with criminological evidence playing a leading edge role. A major challenge is to delineate the boundaries of ethnic cleansing in relation to genocide. I adopt a distinction between atrocity crime and atrocity law to create a space in which this kind of documentation and analysis can occur. I examine how this kind of documentation and analysis was undertaken during real time in the Kosovo and Darfur conflicts.