8. Public hearing. In the order of December 17, 2020, the President of the Court called the parties and the Commission to a public hearing 5 to consider the merits and possible reparations and costs, and to hear the final oral arguments and observations of the parties and of the Commission, respectively. 9. Friendly settlement agreement. On March 25, 2021, prior to the public hearing, the Court received from the State and the representatives a document dated March 24, 2021, entitled “Friendly Settlement Agreement: Case CDH-10-2019 Lemoth Morris et al. (Miskito divers) v. Honduras” (hereinafter the “friendly settlement agreement” or “the Agreement”), signed by the representatives and the State, in which they requested its endorsement by the Court. In addition, the parties asked the Court to suspend the current deadlines and the virtual public hearing convened for April 28, 29 and 30, 2021. This request was admitted by the President of the Court on March 30, 2021. The text of the Agreement can be found in Annex 4 to this judgment. 10. Observations of the Commission and the representatives. With regard to the State’s request for the endorsement of the friendly settlement agreement, the representatives and the Commission presented their respective observations on April 15, 2021. 11. Deliberation of the case. The Court began deliberating this judgment on August 30, 2021. III. JURISDICTION 12. The Inter-American Court has jurisdiction to hear this case pursuant to Article 62(3) of the American Convention on Human Rights because Honduras has been a State Party to the Convention since September 8, 1977, and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on September 9, 1981. IV. FRIENDLY SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT A. Friendly settlement agreement 13. The State accepted that the facts which form the factual basis of the friendly settlement agreement, and therefore of its acknowledgment of responsibility, are those established by the Commission in its Merits Report, which Honduras agreed to abide by. Based on this, the State expressly acknowledged its responsibility for the violation of the rights to life, to life with dignity, to personal integrity, to judicial guarantees, to the rights of the child, to equal protection of the law, to judicial protection, health, work, social security, and to nondiscrimination (Articles 4(1), 5(1), 8(1), 19, 24, 25(1) and 26, in relation to Articles 1(1) and 2 of the same instrument) to the detriment of the alleged victims and their next of kin. 6 In the agreement, the Honduran State also made certain representations and undertook to comply with a series of reparations. Finally, the parties submitted a joint request for the Court to analyze the content and scope of the rights of the American Convention that were affected Cf. Case of Lemoth Morris et al. v. Honduras. Summons to a hearing. Order of the President of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, December 17, 2020. Available at: http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/asuntos/lemoth_morris_y_otros_17_12_2020.pdf 5 In the Friendly Settlement Agreement, the parties recognize as victims the persons identified in the Single Annex of Merits Report No. 64/18, who have been listed in Annex 1 of this Judgment. 6 6