The Commission was established at the 5th Stockholm Conference on Vietnam in March 1970. Its task, as set out in MS. Eng. c. 5692/2, was to, 'deal with ... crimes of aggression against the fundamental national rights of the Indochinese peoples ... to gather and evaluate evidence of the crimes committed by the United States ... and to place this material at the disposal of world opinion.' It organised a series of hearings and conferences, the meeting in Copenhagen in October 1972 being particularly well documented here.

Hodgkin was one of the Deputy Chairmen of the Commission.