Years of Israeli-Palestinian violence has killed civilians and destroyed infrastructure. Children are not just at risk of death and injury, but also psychosocial disorders. Many teenagers in rundown cities and refugee camps see few better opportunities than joining an armed faction.
More than 700 Palestinian children have been killed in the uprising.
Nearly a third of families have a child suffering symptoms of psychosocial distress.
Chronic malnutrition among under-fives is on the rise - now 10 percent.
Few safe places for play or sport. Israeli limits on movement keep many out of school.
Some 285 children were in Israeli detention as of Sept. 2005.
"It's better to spend even your whole life in prison than to be stuck here." Hijazi Abdul-Rahman, 18, from the West Bank. He tried to get himself arrested so he could be sent to an Israeli-run jail where he could study and sit exams.
India is being hailed as a future economic powerhouse, yet 1.2 million children under five die from malnutrition every year. Child labour is outlawed, but tens of millions are forced to work to help feed their families or pay loan sharks.
Rights groups estimate 60 to 115 million children work.
More than 2 million children under five die each year.
Malnutrition affects nearly half of under fives.
Diarrhoea is the second biggest child killer.
Children have been uprooted by violence in Kashmir and the northeast.
Thousands of unborn girls are aborted.
"We used to go through the garbage fields to look for glass, plastic and other recyclable materials. We collected about 10 rupees for each bag containing a kilo of this material."
Some 1.8 million children have been affected by a three-year conflict in Darfur, according to the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), where they risk being recruited to fight and are especially vulnerable to disease and malnutrition.
"It is a traumatised population and you can see it in the children's faces," said Hollywood actress and UNICEF goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow, who last month visited camps for some of the 2.5 million displaced by Darfur's war.
"Everyone has lost family, seen villages burn, seen relatives raped, been raped."
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres - who selected Congo, Uganda and the Sudan/Chad border, where some 200,000 refugees from Darfur eke out an existence - pointed to the physical and psychological consequences of living in crowded, underfunded camps "which are not conducive for a healthy child development".
In southern Sudan, children also suffer the effects of low-level violence, poverty and a lack of basic services. The region is struggling to recover from a 21-year civil war with the north that killed 2 million people, as 600,000 refugees forced to flee the country trickle home.
AlertNet, a humanitarian news website run by Reuters Foundation, asked 112 aid experts and journalists to highlight the world's most dangerous places for children.
After Sudan, they chose northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Somalia, India, the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Myanmar - with the top three clearly ahead.
More than 2 million children worldwide have died as a direct result of armed conflict in the past decade, and about 20 million have been forced to flee their homes, according to UNICEF. More than a million have been orphaned or separated from their families.
Every day thousands of children pick up a gun and go to war. Others trudge miles in the searing heat to look for water and food. Some have to do both.
This factfile highlights the most dangerous places in the world to be a child as judged by a Reuters AlertNet poll of humanitarian workers and journalists.
The three worst places are all in Africa where war and drought has brought death, disease and displacement to millions.
But not all the regions named are ravaged by conflict. India is ranked sixth - reasons given include poverty, malnutrition and child labor.
Sudan, Uganda and Congo are the world's three most dangerous places for children due to wars that have brought death, disease and displacement to millions, a Reuters AlertNet poll showed on Tuesday.
Around half of respondents picked Sudan as one of their three choices, with many singling out the troubled western region of Darfur. Some 1.8 million children have been affected by a three-year conflict in Darfur, according to the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), where they risk being recruited to fight and are especially vulnerable to disease and malnutrition.
War Child International is a network of independent organisations, working across the world to help children affected by war.
War Child was founded upon a fundamental goal: to advance the cause of peace through investing hope in the lives of children caught up in the horrors of war.
