Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms

C. The Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery
174. The mandate of the Working Group is to monitor the existence of “slavery and the slave
trade in all their practices and manifestations”.
281
The Working Group operates with a large
degree of flexibility and receives information from States and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) relating to slavery, servitude, forced labour and other slavery-like practices. Although the
slavery conventions provide for States parties to submit reports to the United Nations, the Working
Group has developed a practice of receiving information from any Governments that may wish to
present it. Normally, at each session the Working Group receives information from NGOs and
then promptly informs the relevant Governments that they have been mentioned and may wish to
submit further information. Since the Governments are rarely given more than a couple of days’
notice, their responses are often spontaneous and they offer to submit further information when it
can be obtained. 
175. The Suppression of Traffic Convention also imposes an obligation on States parties to sub-
mit annual reports to the Secretary-General of the United Nations setting out information on “such
laws and regulations as may be promulgated, relating to subjects of the present Convention, as
well as all measures taken by them concerning the application of the convention” (art. 21). The
reporting requirement is seen as an important mechanism to encourage State compliance with
international norms, but the lack of any mechanism for review of reporting on slavery and traffick-
ing is a clear limitation. The United Nations is aware of this lacuna and it has been suggested that
States parties’ reports submitted under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrim-
280
Ibid., para. 2.
281
Economic and Social Council decision 16 (LVI) of 17 May 1974.

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