More than half of the world's children are threatened by conflict, poverty or sexual discrimination, Save the Children said in a report published on Wednesday. Entitled "Many Faces of Exclusion", the study ranked 175 countries in terms of the threat of child labour, exclusion from education, child marriage and early pregnancy.
It found that 1.2 billion children worldwide were at risk from at least one of the three main threats. Eight of the 10 countries which ranked worst for children were in west and central Africa, with the greatest threat level in Niger. By contrast, Singapore and Slovenia were classed as the countries with the lowest incidence of such problems.