A U.S. report on human trafficking heaped praises on the Australian government to stamp out people smuggling in the Asia-Pacific region, citing the nation as a definitive leading figure in eliminating what it called as modern-day slavery.

Launching the annual study titled 'Trafficking in Persons Report', U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded Canberra for it serious measures that one day could see the end of what she calls as "inhumane treatment ... (that afflicts) as many as 27 million people around the world."

Ms Clinton said that of the report's four-tier ranking, Australia joined the pack of 33 countries that the State Department deemed as governments that meet the minimum requirements of eradicating human smuggling in their areas of jurisdiction.

The report also highlighted the improvements seen in the past year from 29 countries, which means, Ms Clinton said, "that their governments are taking the right steps."

Notwithstanding the gains, Ms Clinton said that data from the 185 nations that came under the radar of the U.S. government only proved that "the end of legal slavery in the United States and in other countries around the world has not, unfortunately, meant the end of slavery."

"The (millions) of victims ... remind us of the kind of inhumane treatment we are capable of as human beings," America's top diplomat was reported as saying on Wednesday by Agence France Presse (AFP).

Government repressions and conflicts raging in the Middle East and in many part of Asia prompted the U.S. government to place 42 nations on the report's watch list and another 16 on the blacklist, which means they belong to the lowest tier of the new report.

Among the governments being closely watched are Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Syria - the latter the site of recent wholesale massacres that were the offshoots of its ongoing internal conflict, which observers said has degenerated to a full-scale civil war.

But the extreme and encouraging part of the data, the report said, is countries like Australia were taking pains to halt the glaring crimes that were committed in large-scale against humanity.

While Australia, the report noted, has rolled out measures in the past years that it hoped would check the illegal flow of immigrants into the country, many successfully slipped through with help from small but well-organised criminal groups.

These groups, according to the Australian Associated Press (AAP), were sadly aided by their business connections, which in turn benefitted from the illegal immigrants who were then driven into forced labour conditions.

"Australia is primarily a destination country for women subjected to forced prostitution and to a lesser extent, women and men subjected to forced labour," AAP quoted the report as saying, which highlighted the reality that despite concerted efforts by local and national authorities, the country is still plagued by a modern form of slavery.

Most of the victims came from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe and there were instances that rescued 'sex slaves' were of minor ages, the report said.

The U.S. report also underscored that "traffickers are part of small but highly sophisticated organised crime networks that frequently involve family and business connections between Australians and overseas contacts."

Such alarming indications, the U.S. government said, should prompt Canberra to revise its existing policies in combating human trafficking and the first thing it can, the report suggested, is to upgrade the country's laws that would criminalise all forms of people smuggling.

"Existing criminal laws do not adequately prohibit deceptive recruitment for labour services and offences related to receiving and harbouring trafficking victims," the U.S. State Department noted on its report.

More breakthroughs can also be achieved should Australian authorities agree to closely coordinate their sometimes disparate campaigns to put a stop to human smuggling, which should result in the immediate apprehension and convictions of groups or persons involved in the criminal activities.

And authorities must ensure that heavy punishments await human traffickers in order to discourage future violations, the report said.