Africa
8 May 2012
Last updated at 00:11 GMT
It considers a number of factors including health, education, economic status and nutrition.
Niger is severely affected by a regional food crisis, and replaces Afghanistan at the bottom of the charity's index.
After two years at the bottom of the list, Afghanistan has moved up one position, and this is credited to greater investment in front line health workers.
This year the situation in Niger reflects the impact of nutrition.
Save the Children says the food crisis developing in the Sahel region is threatening the lives of up to a million youngsters.
The director of policy, Brendan Cox, said: "We urgently need global leadership on malnutrition that results in key nutrition projects being rolled out for mothers and babies to ensure health and survival".
Save the Children believes that measures focusing on the first 1,000 days of a child's life, starting from pregnancy, could help to break the vicious cycle.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says the reports shows that wealth is not the sole criteria for a nation's position in the survey.
He says a poor country like Malawi has done significantly better than might have been expected for one key reason: children are breastfed by their mothers within an hour of their birth and they keep on breastfeeding them for up to two years.
Our correspondent says Nepal, Pakistan and Mali have trained tens of thousands of health visitors to roll out best practice and, as a result, breastfeeding has risen and the number of poorly nourished children has fallen sharply.
Save the Children identifies Norway as the best place to be a mother, while the UK comes 10th.
Nearly one third of Niger's children are malnourished and one in seven dies before the age of five
The west African state of Niger is the worst place in the world to be a mother, according to Save the Children.
The charity releases an annual index comparing conditions for mothers in 165 countries around the world.It considers a number of factors including health, education, economic status and nutrition.
Niger is severely affected by a regional food crisis, and replaces Afghanistan at the bottom of the charity's index.
After two years at the bottom of the list, Afghanistan has moved up one position, and this is credited to greater investment in front line health workers.
This year the situation in Niger reflects the impact of nutrition.
Save the Children says the food crisis developing in the Sahel region is threatening the lives of up to a million youngsters.
The charity describes how chronic
malnutrition leads mothers, who themselves have been stunted in
childhood, go on to have underweight and vulnerable babies.
It warns that if a mother is "impoverished, overworked,
poorly educated and in poor health, she may not be able to feed the baby
adequately, with largely irreversible effects".The director of policy, Brendan Cox, said: "We urgently need global leadership on malnutrition that results in key nutrition projects being rolled out for mothers and babies to ensure health and survival".
Save the Children believes that measures focusing on the first 1,000 days of a child's life, starting from pregnancy, could help to break the vicious cycle.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says the reports shows that wealth is not the sole criteria for a nation's position in the survey.
He says a poor country like Malawi has done significantly better than might have been expected for one key reason: children are breastfed by their mothers within an hour of their birth and they keep on breastfeeding them for up to two years.
Our correspondent says Nepal, Pakistan and Mali have trained tens of thousands of health visitors to roll out best practice and, as a result, breastfeeding has risen and the number of poorly nourished children has fallen sharply.
Save the Children identifies Norway as the best place to be a mother, while the UK comes 10th.
Index rankings
Worst places- Niger
- Afghanistan
- Yemen
- Guinea-Bissau
- Mali
- Norway
- Iceland
- Sweden
- New Zealand
- Denmark
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