The report issued by the Bangkok-based ECPAT International called for tougher national laws and coordinated industry action to protect children from abuse through new information technologies.

Even poor countries in Africa and Asia, where Internet access is limited, have seen a surge in pornographers using camera phones to record child abuse and transmit the pictures around the world, the report said.

Instant messaging services have also become a forum for sex offenders to meet children, said ECPAT, which stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.

Such abuse "is pervasive, causes deep and lasting physical and psychological damage to the child victims, and is outstripping the resources of law enforcement agencies", said the group, which conducted the study as part of a larger UN report on violence against children.

The group's executive director Carmen Madrinan said that the report highlights "the ease with which people who are intent on harming children move between the physical and virtual worlds in order to exploit a child".

Most child pornography is exchanged for free online, but it has also generated an underground business worth billions of dollars that circulates millions of images of child abuse, the report said.

Most free Websites with child pornography have been traced to Russia and former Soviet states, the United States, Spain, Thailand, Japan and South Korea, it added.

Half of the images of child abuse sold online are generated from the United States, and another quarter come from Russia, it said. The two countries are also the leading hosts of commercial child pornography Websites, followed by Spain and Sweden, it said.

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