42 This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a criminal tribunal held in Cambodia with international assistance. Fully operational since 2007, the ECCC tries “senior leaders” and those most respon- sible for serious crimes committed in Cambodia between April 1975 and January 1979. These dates refer to the infamous historical period of “Democratic Kampuchea,” being the name given to the country by the Khmer Rouge during their nearly four-year rule. In this chapter we set out the rationale and legal functioning of the tribunal, before turning to a discussion of the politics and geopolitics of the initial negotiation of the tribunal, as well as its progress to date. Following this, we comment on the historic role played by victims in this legal process—a world first in tribunals of this kind—finishing with a discussion of reparations measures and the contested social and political legacy of the ECCC. The (unprecedented) form and function of the ECCC Up to two million Cambodians died during the Democratic Kampuchea period; some were targeted killings, while others died from starvation, overwork, and lack of sanitation and medical care (see Kiernan 2003; Heuveline 1998). This total is generally considered to represent at least one-fifth of Cambodia’s then population (Kiernan 2004). The murdered and untimely dead were buried in Cambodia’s so-called “killing fields,” mass graves found throughout the country. Many of those who survived had experienced forced transfer into the Cambodian countryside (and some further relocations beyond), the collectivization of work, severe restrictions on family life, forced marriages, and the abolition of religious and cultural observance and institutions. The suffering felt by the victims of Khmer Rouge rule is ongoing. Until the advent of the ECCC, only a single event had attempted to bring Khmer Rouge leaders to legal account for this violence, a 1979 trial in absentia of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, an attempt that had lacked inter- national legal and political legitimacy (see Hughes 2015). The ECCC brings a mix of international law and Cambodian law to bear upon the alleged crimes of the defendants. It is thus known as a “mixed” or “hybrid” legal tribunal (see Cohen 2007; Mendez 2009; Williams 2012). Unlike the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the permanent International Criminal Court, the ECCC is located inside the affected country, 3 JUSTICE AND THE PAST The Khmer Rouge Tribunal Rachel Hughes and Maria Elander