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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.

The International Slavery Convention of 1926, which sought to prevent and suppress the slave trade and to bring about the complete abolition of slavery, became a UN instrument in 1955 (see LEG 17/1/02). However, studies undertaken by ECOSOC and the ILO indicated that in order to effectively eliminate slavery in all its forms a new supplementary convention was needed. These records relate to the drafting of such a convention, adopted by ECOSOC in September 1956 under the title Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. This convention entered into force in April 1957.