These letters correspond to "Sáhara Español" (ESH, as Western Sahara was previously called Spanish Sahara) and also match Saguia el-Hamra, one of two provinces in the earlier Spanish Sahara.

On August 1, 2007, an international consortium made a bid to the IANA to administer the .eh domain on behalf of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Morocco has made competing claims to the domain.

On October 16, 2007, ICANN decided not to delegate .eh at all, under the pretext that "there are currently two applicants for the delegation of the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .EH (Western Sahara). Both requests meet the technical criteria for managing a top-level domain. In cases like this, IANA has a long-standing policy of requesting that the two contesting applicants work together to find a mutual solution that will serve the needs of the local Internet community in the best possible fashion. ICANN does not see a way to approve the .EH ccTLD delegation to one of the applicants without violating its long-standing policy unless the contesting parties are able to reach an agreement". This effectively disables the domain, as evidently no "agreement" is possible given that the competing applicant is a government of occupation.

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