The Division of Human Rights prepared a background document entitled Activities of Various Organs of the United Nations in Connection with the Right of Asylum for the Commission on Human Rights on the right of asylum, an agenda item of the seventh session of the Commission (1951). The right of asylum, which figures in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was not finally included in the draft Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as a result of, among other things, the difficulty in devising acceptable provisions with binding force.
Records consist of correspondence and memoranda related to the transmission of information on human rights situations to members of the United Nations not represented on the Commission on Human Rights.
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.