A/HRC/4/30 page 14 4. The obligation to fulfil (facilitate and provide) 37. The obligation to fulfil the right to food requires Governments to take steps to address hunger and poverty of children. This obligation is made up of two positive obligations - the obligations to facilitate and the obligation to provide. The obligation to facilitate means that the State must facilitate and actively engage in activities intended to strengthen families, parents and caregivers’ access to and utilization of resources and means to ensure their livelihood, including food security. This will enable parents and caregivers to fulfil their responsibility of providing access to adequate and sufficient food to their children. In addition, whenever children or their families are unable, for reasons beyond their control, to enjoy the right to food by the means at their disposal, States have the obligation to provide that right directly. School meal programmes are one example of measures to fulfil the right to food. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the examples of India, South Africa, Cuba and Brazil, which have been at the forefront of efforts to make school meals an entitlement. Governments must also ensure that care and other institutions are able to provide for adequate and nutritious food to those children who remain in their care. This obligation also applies for children who are victims of natural or other disasters. In emergencies, relief programmes that provide food and nutrition must take special care to meet the special needs of children (A/51/306). In this regard, the Special Rapporteur welcomes the revision, which was finalized this year, of the 2001 operational guidelines for emergency relief staff and programme managers produced by the Interagency Working Group on Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies. C. Child combatants in armed conflicts and the right to food 38. The protection of children’s right to food is fundamental in the fight to eliminate children malnutrition and early mortality, but also in the fight against child labour, including forced recruitment of children into armed forces. In Zambia, the official in charge of reducing child labour has declared that “I’ve heard children who work as prostitutes say they would rather die from AIDS, because it is slower than dying of hunger.”30 39. The shocking number of children fighting in wars around the world is also a result of hunger and poverty.31 Ten years after the seminal report of Graça Machel on the impact of armed conflict on children (A/51/306 and Add.1), the Special Rapporteur would like to review what role hunger and food insecurity play in creating an environment which leads children to become involved in armed groups. 40. In 2006 the United Nations estimated that more than 250,000 children were actively involved in armed conflict in government armed forces, government militias and in a range of armed opposition groups (A/61/275). Children are recruited to fight in wars in all regions of the world, from Africa (including Angola, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of 30 International Herald Tribune, 24 August 2006. 31 Brett R., Specht I., Young Soldiers: Why they choose to fight, 2004.