Authorities also should step up their efforts to systematically report cases of human trafficking so they can properly assess the scope of the problem and strengthen efforts to prosecute and convict offenders, the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in the report being released on Monday.

People from 127 countries all too often end up exploited in 137 nations, the study found.

"The fact that slavery - in the form of human trafficking - still exists in the 21^st century shames us all," the agency's executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, said in an introduction to the report.

Most victims are women and children abducted or recruited in their homelands, transported through other countries and exploited in "destination countries," the UN report said.

Victims predominantly come from Africa, central and southeastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Latin America and the Caribbean, the report found. It said Asia serves as both an area of origin and as a destination.

Although most victims end up in Western Europe and the United States, Israel, Japan, Thailand and Turkey also are frequently identified as destination countries, the study said.

CNN