[2] The Declaration was adopted by the nations of the Americas at the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogotá, Colombia, on 2 May 1948.

[3][4] The conference and declaration was led and designed chiefly by United States public servants.

[5][6] The same conference adopted the Charter of the Organization of American States and thereby created the OAS.

As explained in the preamble: Although strictly speaking a declaration is not a legally binding treaty, the jurisprudence of both the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights holds it to be a source of binding international obligations for the OAS's member states.

[8] While largely superseded in the current practice of the inter-American human rights system by the more elaborate provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights (in force since 18 July 1978), the terms of the Declaration are still enforced with respect to those states that have not ratified the convention, such as Cuba, the United States, and Canada.