A/RES/61/144 Reaffirming also the commitment made by world leaders at the Millennium Summit and the 2005 World Summit to devise, enforce and strengthen effective measures to combat and eliminate all forms of trafficking in persons to counter the demand for trafficked victims and to protect the victims, Recalling the reports of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, and the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, as well as the information that deals with trafficking in women and girls contained in the report of the Secretary-General on the in-depth study on all forms of violence against women, 10 Recalling also the report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime entitled “Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns”, and the attention paid in it to the situation of trafficked women and girls, Acknowledging the inclusion of gender-related crimes in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 11 which entered into force on 1 July 2002, Bearing in mind that all States have an obligation to exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and punish perpetrators of trafficking in persons, to rescue victims as well as provide for their protection and that not doing so violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the victims, Recognizing the need for a stronger gender- and age-sensitive approach in all efforts to fight trafficking and protect its victims, taking into account that women and girls are particularly vulnerable to trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, as well as for forced labour or services, Recognizing also the need to address the impact of globalization on the particular problem of trafficking in women and children, in particular girls, Recognizing further the challenges to combating trafficking in women and girls owing to the lack of adequate legislation and implementation of existing legislation, the lack of availability of reliable sex-disaggregated data and statistics, as well as the lack of resources, Seriously concerned that an increasing number of women and girls from developing countries and from some countries with economies in transition are being trafficked to developed countries, as well as within and between regions and States, and that men and boys are also victims of trafficking, including for sexual exploitation, Concerned about the use of new information technologies, including the Internet, for purposes of exploitation of the prostitution of others, for trafficking in women as brides, for sex tourism exploiting women and children and for child pornography, paedophilia and any other forms of sexual exploitation of children, Concerned also about the increasing activities of transnational criminal organizations and others that profit from international trafficking in persons, especially women and children, without regard to dangerous and inhuman conditions and in flagrant violation of domestic laws and international standards, _______________ 10 11 2 A/61/122 and Add.1 and Add.1/Corr.1. United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 2187, No. 38544.