Cross-Border Executive Support of Judicial ‎Settlements A Comparative Study of the Singapore ‎Convention 2019, the Hague Conventions 2005, ‎‎2019 and Iranian Law‎

Conciliation as one of the most well-known dispute resolution methods has gained special credibility due to ratification of Singapore Convention on International Commercial Settlement Agreements 2019 by the United Nations and the granting of executive support to settlement agreements resulting from mediation. One of the types of settlement agreements is judicial settlements recorded by court, which are considered as a kind of settlement agreements due to the main role of the will of the parties (rather than the judge) in drafting them. Also, it is always possible for the parties to reach a settlement after a dispute has been filed in court, and in some cases, the parties to the dispute may even reach an out-of-court settlement agreement and submit the settlement to the court for approval in order to benefit from enforcement support. In both cases, the judge reflects the settlement agreement of the parties in the form of a judicial settlement. An important issue regarding judicial settlements recorded by courts is the possibility of their enforcement in other countries, which is questionable due to the involvement of two dispute resolution

litigation and conciliation. This is because the judicial settlement has a dual nature, because on the one hand, it is a kind of settlements due to the exclusive intervention of the will of the litigants in its conclusion, and on the other hand, it has a judicial nature due to its reflection in the court judgement. Therefore, in order to examine the possibility of enforcing foreign judicial settlements, the provisions related to the enforcement of the settlement agreements and court judgements can be applied. As a result, there are serious doubts about the international treaty applicable to the enforcement of judicial settlements in foreign courts. The position of Iranian law in this regard should also be examined.

The purpose of the present study is fundamental because it contributes to the development of law and in essence, the method of the present study is analytical/descriptive. There is also a comparative approach in this study due to the review of the 2019 Singapore Convention, the 2005 Hague Convention and the 2019 Hague Convention.Theoretical and Conceptual Framework: To examine the subject of the present study, judicial settlements should be examined from the following perspectives: cross-border enforcement of judicial settlements of courts in accordance with the Singapore Convention, cross-border enforcement of judicial settlements of courts in accordance with The Hague Conventions, and cross-border enforcement of judicial settlements of foreign courts in accordance with the Iranian law".

 The main questions of the present article are: Is it possible to enforce cross-border judicial settlements in accordance with the Singapore Convention? Is it possible to enforce cross-border judicial settlements in accordance with the Hague Conventions? Is it possible to enforce cross-border judicial settlements in accordance with the Iranian law? The hypothesis of the present study is that due to the approach of conventions applicable to cross-border judicial settlements and the narrow approach of the Iranian Civil Judgment Enforcement Law, in none of the above three hypotheses can the possibility of cross-border enforcement of the judicial settlements be considered high.Research achievements: Overall, the article concludes that 1- the enforcement of judicial settlements by foreign courts is fraught with difficulties because the Singapore Convention generally excludes such settlement agreements from its scope of executive support in Article 1.3.2- the explicit support of the Hague Conventions for judicial settlements, due to the unacceptability and small number of member states of these treaties, cannot have a positive impact on the enforcement of judicial settlements by foreign courts, 3- the vague and numerous restrictions mentioned in Articles 177 and 169 of the Iranian Civil Judgment Enforcement Law also greatly reduce the possibility of the enforcement of foreign court judicial settlements in Iran. Overall, based on both international law and Iranian law, the possibility of enforcement of cross-border judicial settlements in other countries do not consider high, and individuals and businesses are advised to submit the settlement to an arbitrator (rather than a foreign court) to benefit from the successful New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards in the various States party to the said Convention.