This thesis examines the rise of human rights in inter-American regional law and organisation. It contends that, first, despite their present centrality, inter-American human rights were originally not a priority of American states. Rather, the codification and institutionalisation of inter-American human rights that took place between 1945 and 1969 were part of broader struggles over the legal ordering of regional geopolitical and economic relations. These forgotten struggles involved contested visions of sovereignty, collective security, and economic cooperation, articulated in the language of international law. Second, showing the constitutive power of international law, this thesis argues that shifts in modes of international legal thought and action were conditions of possibility for both the regional codification and institutionalisation of human rights, as well as for their rise to centrality starting in the 1970s. Overall, this thesis challenges the necessity of inter-American human rights as we know them today, opening up space for critique and change. At the same time, this history underscores constraints, showing that human rights rose while projects that entailed a deeper institutional change in inter-American regionalism were foreclosed in and through international law.