The line of lorries snakes back half a mile before the check point. Passengers swarm around their giant wheels and into the road, narrowing the path for our car as we inch our way past the women and young girls selling fruit and peanuts to the milling crowd.

The calm belies what's just ahead; rolls of barbed wire, a couple of UN tanks, and then one of the most dangerous strips of road in Cote d'Ivoire. We are about to cross the Zone de Confiance, the buffer strip set up by UN and French peacekeepers to separate the government troops in the south from the Forces Nouvelles, the rebels who in 2002 rose up and captured the north of the country. What ensued was a four-month bloody battle which killed and displaced hundreds of thousands, and condemned millions of others to poverty, insecurity and violence. The following three years, characterised by political stalemate, ethnic-fuelled spats and human rights abuses by both sides, have turned West Africa's once-richest country into a broken nation.

This is no man's land. The 'Zone Confiance', stretching across the country 1,200 km, is a deadly strip. Many drivers and passengers have been killed by looting bandits who ambush vehicles from the deep jungle either side of the road. The lorries we pass are waiting for an armed UN escort to take them from government-held land to the stronghold of the Forces Nouvelles. Under the protection of our NGO sticker, we are waved through by the guards. But there is tension in the car that only breaks as we pass safely through the UN roadblock at the other side.

Things are moving quickly in Cote d'Ivoire. In March, the president, Laurent Gbagbo, and the leader of the Forces Nouvelles, Guillaume Soro, finally signed a power-sharing deal in Burkina Faso. Just days after I return to the capital Abidjan, on 16 April, the first steps are being taken to dismantle the Zone de Confiance. There will be, pledge Gbagbo and the newly-appointed Prime Minster Soro, a combined government, a joint army and plans for democratic elections in 10 months time. Words of hope for an exhausted population. But relief is still a long way for the millions still struggling in the aftermath of war.

Fifteen-year-old Maria sits opposite me, her fingers playing with an orange scarf wrapped around her head. "I was in the house when the militias came. They grabbed me and tied me up with ten other girls. Then they marched us to their base where they forced us to work." She pauses. "Most of the girls were raped many times. I was lucky; because I was a bit younger than them, ten years old, I just had to cook and wash their clothes. But they were violent and I was very scared." Maria tells me how months later she managed to escape, but had to flee 520km to Abidjan in case the militia followed her back. Her friend, Antoinette, cries as she tells me how her father was shot dead in front of her when the soldiers ambushed her village.

I am in west Cote d'Ivoire near the Liberian border, a region that was ravaged by some of the worst fighting of the conflict. Maria and Antoinette are part of an alternative school set up by Save the Children to help protect vulnerable children - ex-child soldiers, orphans, young mothers, many who lost everything during the conflict. They, like millions of others across the country, are the fallout of war. As I chat with 15-year-old war orphan Patricia in one of the cool, breezy classrooms, she tells me how sometimes there's no food at all for her or her younger brother. Another student, Virginie, 16, has been forced into prostitution to support a family of eight. "It's not ok. But I have no choice. I have to do what I can."

As I emerge from the classroom into the heavy heat a young boy crosses in front of me carrying a gun almost as big as he is. I stare, but it's only for hunting. Three years ago and the weapons were being used for a very different purpose. Boys were being pushed to the frontline, forced to kill, maim, or be shot dead. Girls were taken as army 'wives' or 'cooks', systematically raped and physically abused. Even today some children are still with fighting forces in Cote d'Ivoire, unable or unwilling to give up the 'security' of soldiers with money for an unknown, unstable future. Official figures claim 3,000 children became fodder for the fighters. So far Save the Children has worked with 1,600 ex-child soldiers in the west alone. According to some aid workers, a battalion of over 10,000 boys and girls could be closer to the truth.

Driving back to Guiglo town the car pulls into Nicla, a cluttered, dusty camp, 'home' to 7000 people displaced by the fighting. Men hunch in the latticed shade of lopsided shelters. The rest of the camp is teeming with tiny children. Most of those trapped within Nicla's makeshift wooden fence, dependent on the aid from the handful of organisations that provide them with food and basic healthcare, are 'Burkinabe', originally from Burkina Faso. Before 'la crise' thousands from Burkina Faso, as well as neighbouring countries such as Liberia, Benin and Mali, were working - often in terrible conditions - in Cote d'Ivoire's fertile cocoa plantations. Under the ethnic tensions stirred up by Ivorian politicians in the 1990s, these families, many of whom had been born in Cote d'Ivoire, were branded foreigners.

With Cote d'Ivoire the world's biggest cocoa exporter, the plantations were rich pickings. Ivorians, originally born on plantation land and determined to reclaim it, set to killing the rich farm owners and their workers. Cocoa labourers retaliated with guns and knives. Thousands fled to camps like Nicla, bleak, tarpaulin-strewn and sun-baked. A little boy runs up to me, his tummy bulging and swollen, a seeping, crusty wound on his head. He grabs my hand and giggles, completely naked. It's hard not to contemplate what might happen to him when nobody is watching.

For millions of children in Cote d'Ivoire, nobody is watching most of the time. Figures estimate 31% of children and women here have been coerced into sex. Many are, or have been, victims of military men. Others - young boys roasting peanuts in the market, women selling sachets or water, workers enslaved on the cocoa plantations - are vulnerable to prowling men. Abuse happens at school, in homes and on the streets. In Abidjan, girls as young as 10 serve in 'maquils', restaurants where clients will often lead their young waitresses away for 'afters'.

Cote d'Ivoire sends out mixed signals. Signs of the country's pre-war affluence are everywhere. Even out in the now 'wild west' the bigger roads are smooth tarmac, and each village is announced and then dismissed by neat road signs. Tinpot towns have mobile phone coverage. But a visit to one of the country's biggest hospitals, desperate for more help from a cash-strapped government, and the façade is quick to fall.

Walking into Guiglo hospital, a woman appears at a run from around the side of the building and hurls herself onto a patch of grass, clutching at her legs and screaming. "Someone has died", remarks the surgeon. "So much noise?" he says, tutting. "It is too much". Walking through a broken door into the operating block I start to understand his detachment. How anyone survives any medical procedure in here is testament to the doctors' skill alone. The operating bed is ripped and stained, the legs rusted. Two antiquated-looking machines are propped on the floor, and the one working operating bulb throws a sickly light over the scene. Nor, the anesthetist shows me, is there any anesthetic. They used to use fluo gas here but supplies have run dry and can't be renewed as the government has banned it for being too dangerous. There is a new gas available but the hospital can't afford it. Caesarians, amputations and prostate operations are all performed on oxygen only.

During the war, basic systems broke down. Schools were taken as military barracks, books were destroyed and families lost the money they needed to give their children an education. As for the health system, medical centres were looted; doors and windows were smashed, equipment was taken, and staff fled. In the maternity block of Guiglo hospital, Cynthia, the 33-year-old midwife admits that if three women are giving birth at the same time, the nurses have to share instruments, and there is sometimes no time to sterilize them. But inevitably, the country's poor - and there are many more of them since the war - are the biggest losers. On the side of the maternity unit a brightly painted sign cheerfully announces the price of the fees patients have to pay for care. 'Consultation 500 francs (50p) Birthing kit 1,500 francs (£1.50). Overnight bed, 3000 francs (£3)'. In a country where the government is struggling to right its toppled health system, it's the patients themselves who have to cover every cost of their treatment, from the price of the doctor's surgical gloves to the fluid in their drips. The price of an emergency Caesarian can top £100. For those not reached by the free services of aid organizations or treated as charitable cases by the clinics, the choices are few. Trying to treat themselves with herbal potions provided by local 'guerisseurs' (traditional healers), or just waiting to die at home.

Cote d'Ivoire still has a way to go. At the moment the country is holding its breath. Hope has arrived in the form of a signed peace agreement, and most Ivorians I speak to believe this is the first real step towards stability. But in a country with a dubious record of failed peace agreements, questions balance on the tips of tongues. Can such engrained ethnic and political differences be smoothed under the flag of a combined army? Could fair elections take place in 10 months time when currently millions of people have no birth certificate and so officially 'don't exist'? Whatever the challenges to come, Daniel, an ex-child soldier in Man - soon to be ex-rebel-held territory - thinks the future's going to be ok. "When I grow up, I'm going to be president," he tells me over the desk in his classroom. With such confidence from a child who, three years ago, could have no hope for his future, perhaps we should believe him.

Some of the names in this article have been changed

Save the Children has been running projects in Cote d'Ivoire since 1996. The organisation is supporting schools and health clinics in the north and south of the country by rehabilitating buildings, providing equipment, medicines and training staff. It also works to trace the families of ex-child soldiers and reintegrate them into their communities. It has set up 40 alternative schooling to help protect vulnerable children, teaching core subjects and vocational skills such as pig-keeping and baking. Save the Children works in and with communities to raise awareness of dangerous cultural practices such as female circumcision.

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