Throughout the years, the Commission has monitored the situation of people in the context of human mobility by conducting visits to countries, elaborating thematic studies and country reports, requesting information and conducting hearings and meetings. In order to ensure recognition of individuals in the context of human mobility as subjects of rights and its effective enjoyment, the IACHR has also focused part of its actions to ensure that victims of human rights violations can have equal access to international justice through the mechanisms of individual cases and precautionary measures provided by the Inter-American Human Rights System. The IACHR has also fostered the development of jurisprudence and advisory opinions in relation to rights of these people.

In 1996, in response to the serious situation that internally displaced persons and migrant workers and their families were facing in various countries of the continent, the Commission decided to create the Rapporteurship on Internally Displaced Persons and the Rapporteurship on Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. While the creation of these rapporteurs helped to bring greater attention to the human rights of migrants and their families, as well as internally displaced persons, the protection and promotion of human rights of other groups of people at vulnerability in the context of human mobility is not new in the agenda of the Commission. The focus on other vulnerable groups in the context of human has been a result of the migration of hundreds of thousands of people who had been forced to flee or leave their homes as a consequence of dictatorships and armed conflicts that have occurred in the region during the twentieth century.

In 2012, in order to respond to the multiple challenges of human mobility in the region from international and internal migration to forced and voluntary migration, the Commission decided to amend the mandate of the Rapporteurship on Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, renaming it as Rapporteurship on the Rights of Migrants. The new mandate is focused on respecting and guaranteeing the rights of migrants and their families, asylum seekers, refugees, stateless persons, victims of human trafficking, internally displaced persons and other vulnerable groups of people in the context of human mobility.