Imagining scenes of mass atrocity from afar: Maps and landscapes at the International Criminal Court

Abstract

This article explores the use of maps and landscape descriptions in the opening statements of the prosecution at the International Criminal Court. It analyses how the 'local' crime scene is simplified through cartographic abstractions, imagined through landscape descriptions, and appropriated into a juridified spatial narrative. In this way, maps and their explanations play a role in bridging as well as distancing the local and the global.