3 parties with the aim of attaining a friendly settlement of the matter, pursuant to Article 48(f) of the American Convention. 9. On March 3, 2000, the Guatemalan State recognized its “institutional responsibility” in the instant case, during a public hearing at the seat of the InterAmerican Commission. On that same date, the State and the applicants reached an agreement to advance the criminal proceedings under domestic jurisdiction, for which they established a verification committee in which they agreed to “come together through willingness to reactivate the respective investigation and further the judicial proceeding underway in Guatemala.” 10. On May 26, 2000, the applicants and the State signed an agreement on the way the verification should take place, and on June 22 of that same year they signed an agreement on the framework and the start of the “verification,” on impelling reactivation of the judicial proceeding, on verification actions and reports as well as on procedural thrust, communication among the parties, and publication of said reports. 11. On July 25 and 26, 2000, the Inter-American Commission officially appointed Alfredo Balsells Tojo and Gabriela Vásquez Smerilli as the verifiers. 12. On August 23 and October 4, 2000, the verifiers submitted their first and second reports, respectively, to the Commission. In the latter report, the verifiers reached the conclusion “that the proceeding against the military accused of being the accessories of the murder of anthropologist Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang began in 1994 and to date we cannot envision that it will move forward in the future without judicial obstacles, because from the start there have been all sorts of challenges that have obstructed compliance with due process in the development of the case.” 13. On October 5, 2000, during a hearing before the Commission, Gabriela Vásquez Smerilli presented the second verification report regarding the criminal proceeding. At that same hearing, the applicants affirmed that they did not see any serious commitment and willingness of the State to move the case forward so as to try and to effectively punish the accessories of the murder of Myrna Mack Chang, for which reason they would no longer consider the possibility of reaching a friendly settlement in this case. 14. On March 8, 2001, the Commission, pursuant to Article 50 of the Convention, adopted Report Nº 39/01, in which it reached the conclusion that: [t]he acknowledgment of responsibility by the Guatemalan State has full juridical value in accordance with the principles of international law and place[s] it under to obligation to effectively redress the violations it committed, pursuant to the provisions of the American Convention. Over a year after the acknowledgment of responsibility, the Guatemalan State has undertaken no effective actions to lift the cloak of impunity that still exists regarding the accessories of the extra-legal execution of Myrna Mack. Such inaction by the Guatemalan State leads the Commission to affirm that the State of Guatemala continues to lack a serious willingness to investigate and effectively punish all those responsible for the murder of Myrna Mack Chang in accordance with the provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights. […] Based on these conclusions, the Commission made the following recommendations to the State: