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Last year saw a "massive increase" in recruitment of child soldiers in conflicts in the Ivory Coast, Liberia and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a human rights report issued on Thursday.

In those conflicts, the report by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said "a massive increase in recruitment occurred during 2003."

It identified 18 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East where child soldier issues loomed as human rights abuses in an armed conflict or its aftermath.

Children were used as soldiers, sex slaves, laborers and spies last year, according to the report, released ahead of the U.N. Security Council's open meeting on the problem next Tuesday.

The report said that in the Democratic Republic of Congo children are forced to commit atrocities, rape and sexual torture, and that abductions of children in northern Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army were at the highest point of the conflict's 17-year history.

In Burma, an estimated 70,000 children were in the government armed forces, and reports from Colombia put the number of children used by armed groups at some 11,000.

On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative for children and armed conflict, Olara Otunnu, called on the 15-nation council to take concrete action against the use of child soldiers -- defined by the U.N. as youths 17 and under.

"Although the United Nations has clearly identified violators, the recruitment and use of child soldiers persist all around the world," said Jo Becker, the child rights advocate for Human Rights Watch and the founding chairwoman of the coalition that also includes Amnesty International and Save the Children, among others.

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