The Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (EECC) is one of a pair of commissions established by the Peace Agreement of 12 December 2000 that ended a costly war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that had begun in May 1998. That war, which was sparked by disputes over the countries' common border, caused much damage and many thousands of casualties on each side. It also proved terribly expensive, as each party spent large amounts of money and incurred large debts to acquire modern weapons of war and the related munitions. Given the causes and the consequences of the war, it was, perhaps, not surprising that the Peace Agreement created a boundary commission to determine for the parties a common boundary that they would be obliged to accept, and a claims commission to resolve the claims of each party against the other for any acts arising out of the war that injured that party, including injury to its nationals, and that were in violation of international law.

However understandable in the context of the war, the creation of an international commission charged with determining which actions of the parties to a war violated the applicable international law is a rare event. While we have seen very recently the establishment of international criminal tribunals for the punishment of war crimes by individuals, we have not seen the creation of any other international tribunal that has the task of deciding the legal responsibility of a state for violations of the laws of war.