ECCC

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), often called the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, is a hybrid criminal court established to try senior leaders and those "most responsible" for atrocities committed during Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 17 April 1975 to 6 January 1979. The regime is associated with the deaths of roughly 1.7 to 2 million people through execution, starvation, forced labour, and disease.

The court was created by an agreement between the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia, signed in 2003 and entering into force in 2005, following years of negotiation that began in 1997. Unlike the ICTY or ICTR, the ECCC sits within the Cambodian court system and uses a mix of Cambodian and international judges, with supermajority voting rules designed to prevent purely national decisions. It applies both Cambodian domestic law and international crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Key cases include:

• Case 001: Kaing Guek Eav ("Duch"), commandant of the S-21 (Tuol Sleng) prison, convicted in 2010 and sentenced on appeal in 2012 to life imprisonment.
• Case 002: Nuon Chea ("Brother Number Two") and Khieu Samphan, former head of state. Both were convicted of crimes against humanity, and in a 2018 judgment the chamber found them guilty of genocide against the Cham and Vietnamese minorities — the first such judicial finding for the Khmer Rouge period.

The ECCC has been praised for delivering accountability decades after the fact and for extensive victim participation as civil parties, but criticised for its cost (hundreds of millions of dollars), slow pace, narrow indictments, and persistent allegations of Cambodian government interference, particularly blocking Cases 003 and 004. Its judicial work largely concluded with the affirmation of Khieu Samphan's conviction in 2022, after which it transitioned to a residual phase.