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The records consist of responses from the governments of Laos, Iceland, Denmark, New Zealand, the USSR, Germany, France, Iraq, El Salvador, Philippines, Ceylon, Monaco, Austria, Pakistan, Canada, Nepal, Switzerland, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Belgium, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Norway, Libya, the United States, Finland, Chile, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Indonesia, Cambodia, Italy, Uruguay and China to the request for supplementary information on slavery and servitude by the Secretary-General in February 1952.

The records include responses from the governments of Belgium, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Argentina and from the ILO and FAO to the request for supplementary information on slavery and servitude by the Secretary-General in February 1952. They contain correspondence on the Report on Slavery as well as a summary of the discussion in the thirteenth session of the Council on the report.

The records provide information on the work of the Secretariat working committee on slavery including work on the text of the slavery resolution as approved by the Special Committee and the drafts of the communication to be sent to governments for additional information.

The records include responses from the government of Japan as well as WHO and UNESCO, to the request for supplementary information on slavery and servitude by the Secretary-General in February 1952.The file includes the Chilean response to allegations of servitude, and the Iraqi response to similar allegations.

The Economic and Social Council, at its ninth session, instructed the Secretary-General to appoint an Ad Hoc Committee of experts to survey the field of slavery and other institutions or customs resembling slavery. The Ad Hoc Committee prepared a questionnaire that was sent to governments in order to secure official information on the present situation of slavery and servitude. This questionnaire was followed by a request for additional information as many governments failed to submit information on territories under their control, or based their responses entirely on the legal status of various forms of servitude, while others submitted information in ambiguous terms that required further clarification. The government responses to both these communications form part of the records of this series.

Within the Division of Human Rights, a working group on slavery and servitude was formed in 1951 to examine the material received by the Ad Hoc Committee from governments, non-governmental organizations and other sources in order to draft a report based on this new information.