The Concept of the Civilian examines how the processes of international criminal justice construct legal recognition of the civilian victims of contemporary armed conflicts. Drawing on a detailed case-study of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), this book examines two how civilians are understood as a social and legal category of persons; and secondly, how legal practices shape victim identities and redress in relation to these persons. Combining socio-legal concepts and methodologies with insights from transitional justice scholarship, Claire Garbett thus traces the historical emergence of the concept of the civilian, and critically examines how the different stages of legal proceedings produce its conceptual form in distinction from that of combatants.