Ethnic Cleansing and Other Lies: Combining Health and Human Rights in the Search for Truth and Justice in the Former...

The establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia reflects the human rights idea that there can be no justice without truth and that notions of justice must inform the process of extracting some truth from the many stories, myths and lies that have been told about "ethnic cleansing." This article uses a three-pronged approach to combine the normative framework of human rights with the practical, quantitative methods of public health. This approach provides powerful mechanisms for extablishing truth and accountability for ethnic cleansing. First, clinical and forensic evidence is critical in documenting when and whether ethnic cleansing actually occurred. Second, public health methodology can be brought to bear to define both the nature of the legally cognizable crimes committed and the nature of the harms ensuing from those crimes. Third, public health tools can help reinforce conceptions of individual responsibility and identity formation that refute the premises of ethnic cleansing and which are essential to the future of the Tribunal and to international human rights law in general.