Are agreements between states and victims an effective way to achieve reparations for human rights violations? We identify and evaluate a legal instrument hitherto ignored in analyses of the Inter-American Human Rights System: compliance agreements. These agreements emerged as a tool to negotiate the implementation of recommendations made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to states responsible for human rights violations. In the first part of the paper, we theorize the role of agreements in securing state compliance, and discuss the problem of self-selection in legal settlements. We then document the emergence of this legal instrument and its novel role in the Inter-American System. In the third part, we provide statistical evidence from event history, matching, difference-in-differences, and sensitivity analyses showing that agreements increase the probability of compliance and cut the expected time to compliance by more than half. Agreements thus contribute to a potential solution for the perceived crisis of compliance in the Inter-American Human Rights System. However, the Commission must offer greater transparency to facilitate the evaluation of this mechanism.

中文翻译：

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遵守协议：美洲人权体系中的新兴灵活性

国家与受害者之间的协议是对侵犯人权行为进行赔偿的有效途径吗？我们确定并评估了迄今为止在美洲人权体系分析中被忽视的法律文书：合规协议。这些协议成为谈判实施美洲人权委员会向侵犯人权行为负责的国家提出的建议的工具。在本文的第一部分，我们理论化了协议在确保国家遵守方面的作用，并讨论了法律解决中的自我选择问题。然后，我们记录了这一法律文书的出现及其在美洲体系中的新作用。在第三部分中，我们提供了来自事件历史、匹配、双重差异和敏感性分析的统计证据，表明协议增加了遵守的可能性，并将预期遵守时间缩短了一半以上。因此，协议有助于解决美洲人权体系中存在的合规危机。然而，委员会必须提供更大的透明度，以促进对该机制的评估。