38 incredible portraits showing how different the lives of children from different countries of the world are

These portraits, fascinating in their honesty, were taken in very different, remote corners of our planet by photographers whose names were in the final of the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards photo contest. The judges selected children's portraits among a huge number of works of various categories to show the enormous difference in the conditions in which children are forced to grow up.

The lives of these children are unlikely to change. They are all forced to live where they were born and live like their parents until they grow up. But even with age, their destinies will still depend too much on their childhood.

Guizhou Province of China. This boy's parents harvest in the field, and his 90-year-old grandmother stays with him. The photo shows a rare moment of tenderness.

11-year-old Li Hang, suffering from Prader—Willi syndrome, is undergoing a traditional Chinese procedure at a weight loss center.

The girl participates in navjot — a ceremony in the religion of Zoroastrianism, similar to baptism.

A ceremony at a Sikh temple in one of the districts of Parma, Italy.

11-year-old Taha Sirhah walks with an Iraqi flag through a scorched oil field, the city of Qayyara. His father was killed during the occupation of the city by ISIS (banned in Russia is a terrorist organization. — Ed.), because he worked for the Iraqi police.

Twin girls at a gymnastics training session at a Chinese sports school in Jining, Shandong Province.

Cairo, Egypt. When the photographer asked the boy to smile for the portrait, he replied that he could not.

A boy with fresh wounds that will later become scars is a typical "decoration" for local tribes. Togo, West Africa.

A 2-year-old boy during a painful scarring ceremony, Benin, West Africa.

9-year-old Suzanne sits in a rusty car in front of the abandoned building where she lives, Gyumri, Armenia.

Gansu, Chinese province. This girl is one of 61 million children in villages who were abandoned by their parents to move to the city. The girl says that her mother ran away when she was six months old.

Children at the Gahan Festival. The boy holds the skull in the hope that next year there will be heavy rains and a harvest. A village in West Bengal, India.

Refugee children from Syrians hide from the rain during transportation from a Turkish camp.

Participants of the bodybuilding championship are waiting behind the scenes, Stavropol, Russia.

In a poor neighborhood of Gyumri, Armenia, Lyusin sleeps with her five children in the same room. In Soviet times, 60 families were located in these huge houses on the outskirts of the city. Today, four families live in crumbling buildings.

The girl and her parents live in a cave house, traditional for the Chinese province of Shanxi.

The portrait was taken at the cemetery in Manila, Philippines, where a homeless community lives, including this kid. He found a balloon among the bones and is now playing with it.