This article in Disasters documents the significant threats to children’s well-being directly linked to the political conflict in Darfur, Sudan. It demonstrates the role of non-conflict factors in exacerbating these dangers and in promoting additional protection violations and it uses the ‘protective environment’ framework to identify systematic features of the current environment that put children at risk. This framework is shown to provide a coherent basis for assessment and planning, prompting broad, multidisciplinary analysis, concentrating on preventive and protective action, and fostering a systemic approach (rather than placing an undue focus on the discrete needs of ‘vulnerable groups’).