[1] It was provisionally founded in September 1948 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and officially recognised by an exchange of letters in December 1949 and two protocols in 1950 and 1952.

[2] The organisation is seated in Strasbourg, France,[3] and its official language is French.

Founded after World War II in the context of millions of refugees, missing and displaced people, the organisation's aim was to facilitate the cooperation between states in establishing, recognising and validating civil status documents, also known as vital records, such as birth, marriage and death certificates.

It did so by drafting international treaties such as the Convention on the issue of multilingual extracts from civil status records, which provides standard multilingual formats of vital records, allowing their international acceptance without the need for translation or legalisation.

[4] In 2024, the Francophone Notary Association, representing 28 states,[a] joined the organisation as a non-state member.