Highlights of the report findings include: (1) in response to trafficking in persons, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (effective December 2003), inspiring widespread legislative responses with 63 percent of the 155 countries and territories passing laws against trafficking in persons as of November 2008; (2) in the area of gender, citizenship and forms of victimization, women play a key role as perpetrators of human trafficking, most of the offenders were citizens of the country where they were arrested, and in the 52 countries where the form of exploitation was specified, 79 percent of the victims were subjected to sexual exploitation; and (3) in the flow of human trafficking, in most of the reported cases, victims were moved across international borders and most of the cross-border trafficking activity was between countries of the same general region, particularly between neighborhoods. The primary value of this report has been to assess the information available, to highlight what is not known and to suggest how information-gathering systems could be improved. The report, by the UNODC conducted in 2007 in the framework of the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, demonstrates that international monitoring of human trafficking trends and patterns is possible and that a surprising wealth of information is available. An international mechanism to monitor trends and patterns of trafficking in persons needs to be established with the object of continuing data collection of the sort gathered in this study survey. Charts, figures, and tables