## Facts

- Eritrea and Ethiopia fought an international armed conflict from 1998 to 2000, followed by a cease-fire and a process of disengagement.
- The Eritrea–Ethiopia Claims Commission was created by the 2000 Algiers Peace Agreement to decide, by binding arbitration, interstate claims for loss, damage, or injury connected to the conflict, including claims brought on behalf of individuals.
- Eritrea filed multiple civilian claims alleging that Ethiopia mistreated Eritrean nationals and persons of Eritrean origin through expulsions, denationalization measures, detention, property seizures, and related abuses.
- The Commission treated the award as “partial,” addressing liability on specified civilian claims while leaving compensation for later phases.
- The Commission addressed the status of persons of Eritrean origin in Ethiopia, including whether many were dual nationals and whether Ethiopia could treat referendum participation as a basis to reclassify them as solely Eritrean.
- The Commission evaluated alleged conduct during active hostilities and during the disengagement and immediate post-conflict period.

## Issues

1. Whether the Commission’s mandate extends beyond state responsibility to domestic-law violations or individual criminal liability, and whether it covers isolated incidents.
2. What body of international law governs treatment of civilians and civilian aliens in the conflict and its immediate aftermath, including the temporal reach of those protections.
3. Whether Ethiopia’s expulsions and related measures against Eritrean and Eritrean-origin civilians constituted unlawful expulsion under international humanitarian law.
4. Under what conditions preventive detention of civilian aliens is lawful, and when detention conditions and practices breach international law.
5. Whether interference with civilian property and economic activity violated applicable international standards.

## Decision

- The Commission held it could decide only state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts; it lacked jurisdiction over individual criminal liability and over claims based purely on domestic law.
- The Commission limited its mass-claims review to serious violations affecting multiple victims, focusing on systematic, frequent, and recurring violations rather than isolated events.
- The Commission applied the 1949 Geneva Conventions, customary international humanitarian law, and, where relevant, human rights law; it treated much of Additional Protocol I as reflective of customary rules, subject to rebuttal.
- The Commission concluded that international humanitarian law protections continued through disengagement and the immediate aftermath when the conduct arose during the conflict or as a result of its ending.
- On the merits, the Commission found Ethiopia internationally responsible for certain systematic breaches involving unlawful expulsions and patterns of abusive or improperly administered civilian detention, and for certain patterns of property interference; it rejected other claims for lack of jurisdiction or insufficient proof of systematic or recurring violations.
- The Commission determined that many affected persons possessed dual Eritrean and Ethiopian nationality and that Ethiopia could not unilaterally and retroactively treat long-term residents as non-nationals solely due to referendum participation, particularly where that reclassification facilitated expulsion and related harms.

## Legal Principles

- An interstate claims commission created for conflict-related arbitration may confine adjudication to state responsibility for breaches of international law and exclude domestic-law claims and individual criminal accountability.
- In a mass-claims setting, a tribunal may require proof of serious, systematic, frequent, and recurring violations to establish state responsibility, rather than adjudicating isolated incidents.
- Civilian aliens are protected under international humanitarian law, including constraints on expulsion and safeguards governing internment or other security measures.
- Preventive detention of civilian aliens may be lawful when justified by security needs and accompanied by appropriate safeguards; co-mingling civilian aliens with prisoners of war is unlawful.
- Short-term, austere detention without a pattern of physical abuse may fall short of an international wrong, while prolonged detention in harsh and unsanitary conditions accompanied by frequent physical abuse violates international law.
- A state may not arbitrarily denationalize or retroactively reclassify long-term residents in a manner that produces discriminatory expulsion and associated deprivations; dual nationality may limit a state’s ability to treat residents as enemy aliens.
- Conflict-related humanitarian protections can extend through cessation of active hostilities to the disengagement and immediate post-conflict period when the complained-of acts are sufficiently connected to the conflict’s ending.

## Conclusion

The Commission issued a mixed liability award that narrowed its mandate to systematic violations of international law, applied Geneva-based and customary humanitarian protections (with related human rights considerations), and held Ethiopia responsible for certain patterns of unlawful expulsion, abusive detention practices, and property interference affecting Eritrean and Eritrean-origin civilians during and immediately after the conflict.


Eritrea v. Ethiopia, Partial Award, Civ. Claims, Eritrea’s Claims 15, 16, 23 & 27–32, 44 I.L.M. 601 (Eri.-Eth. Cl. Comm’n 2005)