A/HRC/4/30 page 15 the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Uganda) to Asia (including Afghanistan, Myanmar and Nepal), and from Latin America, where the phenomenon is prevalent in Colombia. Europe has also seen the problem of child soldiers during the conflicts in the Balkans, including in Kosovo (ibid.). 41. Thousands of children make decisions to enlist in armed groups as a result of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity, yet this is rarely discussed in debates over this problem.32 Although many children are forcibly recruited, the majority of child soldiers are adolescents between the age of 14 and 18 who “volunteer” because they are desperately in need of food and income, with which they can support themselves and their families.33 In Guinea, research showed that almost 10 per cent of child soldiers declared having joined armed groups in order to obtain food or other benefits.34 During the Liberian conflict, children also joined voluntarily to obtain food for themselves and their families. Similarly, in many of those regions affected by conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, children who enlisted came from the poorest families earning less than one dollar per day.35 42. Many young people decide to enlist as a means of covering basic necessities for them and their families, especially when livelihoods have already been eroded by war.36 Many children and young people decide to join armed groups because they feel responsibility for contributing to supporting their families, especially when family breadwinners are killed, injured, imprisoned or disappear. Evidence from Nepal, for example, seems to indicate that children from very poor households headed by a single parent were more at risk of being recruited by Maoists on account of food insecurity.37 43. However, taking up arms or carrying out other duties for armed groups does not necessarily and automatically entail an improvement in children’s food security situation. At times armed groups promise rewards in the form of money, food and clothing to persuade young people to join, but these promises are often not kept. In a recent study, it was found that children were told by the commanders that they had to provide food or means to acquire it by themselves, a clear encouragement to looting families and communities.38 Frequently, child combatants went hungry and died of starvation, as Josephine from northern Uganda, recounted: 32 See note 31. 33 Idem. 34 Small Arms Survey, 2006. 35 Redress, Victims, Perpetrator or Heroes? Child soldiers before the International Criminal Court, 2006. 36 See 31 above. 37 Charu Lata Hogg, “Child recruitment in South Asian conflicts: A comparative analysis of Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh”, 2006, Chatham House, London. 38 See note 35 above.