UN General Assembly
1961

238. It is clear, however, that a new tendency in international law has led to the proclamation of the noble human principle that force, war, conquest and aggression cannot and must not be the source of binding obligations or legal commitments. 239. In this day and age, conquest and force can never constitute a legal basis. Therefore, the American legal system, adapting the old concept of international law. contains the patiently but firmly formulated doctrine which reaffirms the principle of the "non-recognition of territorial conquests by force". The precept embodied in this doctrine was, as early as 1933, at the Inter-American Conference of Montevideo, elevated to the category of a positive precept of American international law, was subsequently consecrated in the 1938 Declaration of Lima and is now contained in concrete form in Article 17 of the Charter of the Organization of American States.