FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW
type: CreativeWork
description: Forced displacement is one of the most pressing phenomena of our time. According to UNHCR data, the number of forcibly displaced persons worldwide increased from 18.2 million to 117.3 million between 1993 and 2024 – more than six times higher in thirty years. Despite the scale and severity of the phenomenon, forced displacement has rarely been examined as a specific and coherent object of analysis within international criminal law. Existing legal scholarship has either approached the subject from a wider human rights perspective or tended to focus on specific political, historical or geographical contexts, rather than on displacement as a category of international crimes. This thesis represents a modest attempt to begin filling that gap by examining the constitutive elements of forced displacement within international criminal law and analysing the conceptual and structural tensions that emerge when contemporary configurations of displacement are confronted with existing legal categories. The thesis addresses two central questions: what are the exact constitutive elements of the provisions governing forced displacement under the Rome Statute, and to what extent is the existing framework capable of capturing the diverse forms of displacement in contemporary contexts? The central argument is that international criminal law contains conceptual resources capable of addressing a wider spectrum of displacement practices than is commonly recognised. Prevailing doctrinal interpretations have often narrowed the scope of these crimes by associating them primarily with sudden episodes of mass expulsion and by insufficiently engaging with the structural power relations that shape displacement contexts. The thesis argues that the constitutive elements of crimes of displacement can only be adequately assessed when situated within the historical and political context in which displacement occurs, and in light of the power asymmetries that structure both the imposition of movement …
abstract: Forced displacement is one of the most pressing phenomena of our time. According to UNHCR data, the number of forcibly displaced persons worldwide increased from 18.2 million to 117.3 million between 1993 and 2024 – more than six times higher in thirty years. Despite the scale and severity of the phenomenon, forced displacement has rarely been examined as a specific and coherent object of analysis within international criminal law. Existing legal scholarship has either approached the subject from a wider human rights perspective or tended to focus on specific political, historical or geographical contexts, rather than on displacement as a category of international crimes. This thesis represents a modest attempt to begin filling that gap by examining the constitutive elements of forced displacement within international criminal law and analysing the conceptual and structural tensions that emerge when contemporary configurations of displacement are confronted with existing legal categories. The thesis addresses two central questions: what are the exact constitutive elements of the provisions governing forced displacement under the Rome Statute, and to what extent is the existing framework capable of capturing the diverse forms of displacement in contemporary contexts? The central argument is that international criminal law contains conceptual resources capable of addressing a wider spectrum of displacement practices than is commonly recognised. Prevailing doctrinal interpretations have often narrowed the scope of these crimes by associating them primarily with sudden episodes of mass expulsion and by insufficiently engaging with the structural power relations that shape displacement contexts. The thesis argues that the constitutive elements of crimes of displacement can only be adequately assessed when situated within the historical and political context in which displacement occurs, and in light of the power asymmetries that structure both the imposition of movement …
author: PARSI, LAVINIA
language: eng
keywords: displacement, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, borderisation, international criminal law, war crime, crimes against humanity, genocide, settlement, annexation, migrants, Settore GIUR-14/A - Diritto penale, Settore GIUR-09/A - Diritto internazionale
date published: 2026-05-28
date modified: 2026-07-27T20:19:05Z
provider: Università degli Studi di Milano
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Università degli Studi di Milano

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/1248935