140. Thereafter, in 1969, the right of everyone to seek and be granted asylum was recognized in Article 22(7) of the American Convention.171 As indicated, Bolivia has been a party to the American Convention since July 19, 1979. 141. Subsequently, the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees was adopted in a colloquium organized by UNHCR and other institutions held in November 1984 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Among others, it was attended by experts from the six Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua) and from the member countries of the Contadora Group (Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela). The Declaration expanded the definition of refugee to include as refugees, in addition to the elements of the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, persons who have fled their countries because their life, safety or freedom had been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, mass human rights violations, or other circumstances that may have seriously disturbed public order. The Declaration ratified the “peaceful, apolitical and exclusively humanitarian nature of grant of asylum or recognition of the status of refugee.”172 The expanded definition of refugee contained in this Declaration has been adopted by 14 different national legislatures in Latin America173 and, in the case of Bolivia, was included in Supreme Decree 19640 of July 4, 1983,174 which was applied in the events of this case. 142. The said Article 22(7) of the Convention indicates two criteria of an accumulative nature for the existence or exercise of this right: (a) “…in accordance with the legislation of the State …,” in other words, of the State in which asylum is requested, and (b) “… in accordance with […] international conventions.”175 This concept, included in the text of Article 22(7) of the Convention, understood in conjunction with the recognition of the right to non-refoulement in Article 22(8), supports the interrelationship between the scope and content of these rights and international refugee law. 143. Under Article 29(b) of the Convention, in order to interpret and apply the provisions of the Convention more specifically to determine the scope of the State’s obligations in relation to the facts of this case,176 the Court takes into account the significant evolution of the principles and regulation of international refugee law, based also on the directives, criteria and other 171 Article 22(7) of the American Convention: “Every person has the right to seek and be granted asylum in a foreign territory, in accordance with the legislation of the State and international conventions, in the event he is being pursued for political offenses or related common crimes.” 172 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, adopted by the Colloquium on the International Protection of Refugees in Central America, Mexico and Panama: Legal and Humanitarian Problems,” held in Cartagena, Colombia, from November 19 to 22, 1984, at http:// ww.oas.org/dil/1984_Cartagena_Declaration_on_Refugees.pdf 173 This is the case of Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. 174 “Article 2: Anyone who has been forced to flee their country owing to internal armed conflicts; foreign aggression, occupation or domination, and massive human rights violations, or owing to events of a political nature that have seriously affected public order in the country of origin or provenance, shall also be considered a refugee for humanitarian reasons.” 175 IACHR. Report No. 51/96. Decision of the Commission as to the merits of Case No. 10,675. Haitian Interdiction – Haitian Boat People. United States. March 13, 1997, para. 151. Although the Commission ruled in this case on the scope of the right to seek and to receive asylum in light of the American Declaration, this understanding is applicable to Article 22(7) of the Convention, because the relevant wording is substantially the same. In paragraph 152 of this report, the Commission analyzed the travaux préparatoires of this article, indicating that: “the travaux préparatoires show that the first draft of the article did not have the phrase ‘in accordance with the laws of each country.’ That phrase was added during the sixth session of the Sixth Commission of the Inter-American Juridical Committee at the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogota in 1948, and discussed at the seventh session of the Sixth Commission, to preserve the States sovereignty in matters of asylum.” 176 Cf., mutatis mutandi, Case of the Santo Domingo Massacres v. Colombia, para. 255, and mutatis mutandi, Case of Atala Riffo and daughters v. Chile. Merits, reparations and costs, para. 83. 46