The Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission’s Controversial Ruling on self-defence

This chapter aims to analyse the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission’s (EECC) Partial Award on Ethiopia’s jus ad bellum claim of 19 December 2005. It specifically focuses on the issue of self-defence, which is one of the most controversial grounds of defence submitted by Eritrea before the EECC. This study contends that, although the EECC’s final conclusion that in 1998 Eritrea violated the prohibition on the use of force established by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter may well be in its essence correct, both the EECC’s methodology and its substantive legal analysis of the relevant law on the use of force raise criticism. It argues that the exclusion of all frontier incidents from the scope of armed attacks in the EECC’s Partial Award marks a step back as compared to the relevant decisions of the International Court of Justice. The conclusion of the chapter is that the EECC’s ruling does not help to bring coherence and unity to the jurisprudence on jus ad bellum, and does not reflect customary international law.