ERN = Evidence Reference Number

Posted Mon, 06/24/2013 - 11:04 by Mr. Lars Olsen

As the Trial Chamber hearings this week will be dedicated to the presentation of documentary evidence, parties will frequently quote ERN or page numbers to identify the documents being discussed.

RN is an acronym for Evidence Reference Number.  Each page of every document in the case files has a unique ERN number. The ERN number is an eight-digit number in the upper left side of each document page, which is used to identify a single page in the case file (see image below). The ERN number is continuously assigned to each new page placed in the case file with an increment of 1. As you can see in the example below, this means that when the first page of the document has been assigned ERN 00921916, the second page has ERN 00921917, the third page will then have ERN 00921918.

The ERN number series are not identical in Khmer, English and French languages.  For the document below, the first page's ERN number in Khmer is 00922758 (whereas the corresponding English ERN is 00921916). The reason for such discrepancy is that all documents are not available in all three languages, and the number of pages for each document is usually not the same in all three languages. When making an ERN reference, a party will also specify which language they are referring to. The ERN numbers allow parties to quickly identify a single page in a document when searching electronically through hundreds of thousands of pages in the case files.