In this paper, we shall present two interlocking arguments, both drawing on a distinction between formal and substantive models of justice. In a first step, we depart from the accepted presumptions about the formal delivery of international criminal justice and its capacities to deliver peace and security, to consider how alternative views on the legitimacy of international criminal tribunals and retributive justice present some far more unsettling perspectives about the performance and promise of these nascent courts. If these issues are taken seriously, then one should reconsider whether international trials are able to deliver the broader forms of substantive justice that might provide a more effective means of mitigating refugee displacement. In a second step, we then consider why the ICTY’s reasoning in the Gotovina case will remain unable to prevent future ethnic cleansing, as the trial paradigm does not invite judges to address the broader substantive questions as to how deeply divided communities are to live with each other. Worse still, the Gotovina acquittal by the Appeals Chamber risks to entrench the idea that the massive abuses, considered to constitute ‘persecution’ by the Trial Chamber, may be unleashed with impunity under cover of an armed conflict.