ECCC — Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

ECCC — Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

This skill governs every output that touches the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. The discipline is simple and the reason for it is concrete: ECCC document numbers are exact, the procedural lineage between filings matters, dates and chambers matter, and a confident-sounding but invented citation in a real filing creates real problems — including for the Cambodian victims and civil parties whose participation was, by design, the heart of these proceedings.

The discipline in one paragraph

For any case-specific document — decision, judgment, closing order, indictment, filing, OCP submission — verify before citing. "Verify" means web_fetch (or equivalent retrieval) to eccc.gov.kh or legal-tools.org in the current conversation. Foundational texts in project knowledge (ECCC Law as amended, UN-Cambodia Agreement, Internal Rules) are the exception; they may be cited directly. Nothing else.

Verification is gradient, not binary

In practice, web_fetch to eccc.gov.kh sometimes succeeds, sometimes returns a page that confirms a document exists but does not surface its paragraph text, and sometimes returns the document only in Khmer or French rather than English. Honest outputs reflect this. Three levels:

• Existence verified. Document number, title, date, chamber confirmed against an authoritative source. The Court issued the document, and it is the document the citation names. Sufficient for "X case was decided on Y date by Z Chamber" claims.
• Content verified. The fetched text confirms the document says, in substance, what the output claims it says. Sufficient for "the Chamber held that…" claims.
• Paragraph verified. The specific cited paragraph(s) contain the cited proposition. Required for any quotation and for any paragraph-pinpoint citation.

Label the level when relevant. Do not silently downgrade — a "Trial Chamber held X" claim that is only existence-verified is not honest if the output doesn't say so. See references/verification-workflow.md.

Standard workflow

Step 0 — Identify the document(s). Before anything else, read what is actually in front of you. If the user provides a file, open it and confirm its case, document number, date, chamber. If the user references a document by name ("the Duch appeal judgment", "the Case 002/02 trial judgment"), confirm which document they mean. ECCC severance and renumbering make this especially important: a citation to "the Case 002 trial judgment" is ambiguous between 002/01 and 002/02. Identity errors propagate; the cost of catching them at Step 0 is one read.

Step 1 — Plan citations. List every citation that will appear in the output. For each, note the document, the proposition it will support, and the source to verify against.

Step 2 — Verify, with the fallback ladder. For each case-specific citation, work the ladder in references/verification-workflow.md: eccc.gov.kh → legal-tools.org → cambodia.ohchr.org → search snippet from a Tier 1 domain → academic/Court-record secondary → ask the user for a URL. Capture document number, date, chamber, title, and paragraph numbers. Read the cited passage and confirm it supports the proposition.

Step 3 — Draft using verified material. Use the citation format in references/citation-format.md. Where verification is partial, say so in the output.

Step 4 — Self-audit. Each citation must trace to project knowledge (foundational text) or a successful retrieval in this conversation, with verification level appropriate to the claim. If not, the citation comes out or the claim is softened to what the verification actually supports.

Foundational texts (cite from project knowledge when present)

• Agreement between the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia concerning the Prosecution under Cambodian Law of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea (6 June 2003) — "UN-Cambodia Agreement"
• Addendum to the UN-RGC Agreement on the Transitional Arrangements and the Completion of Work of the Extraordinary Chambers (entered into force December 2021) — confers the ECCC's residual functions; the residual phase commenced 1 January 2023
• Law on the Establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea (NS/RKM/0801/12, 10 August 2001; as amended by NS/RKM/1004/006, 27 October 2004) — "ECCC Law" or "ECCC Establishment Law"
• Internal Rules of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia — currently Rev. 10 (27 October 2022); earlier revisions remain cited in older decisions

If not in project knowledge, retrieve from eccc.gov.kh/en/about/legal-framework before citing. For the Internal Rules, the revision number matters: a 2010 decision cites the Internal Rules then in force (likely Rev. 5 or 6), not the current revision. Cross-check which revision was in force at the time of the cited decision. See references/foundational-texts.md.

The Court's own jurisprudence digest