 In negotiations with the government, armed groups have offered to stop the recruitment of minors as a bargaining chip, but they have not honoured these offers.Bjørkhaug argues that most child soldiers were recruited through some combination of voluntary participation and coercion.In 1998 a Human Rights Watch press release indicated that 30 percent of some guerrilla units were made up of children and up to 85 percent of some of the militias, which are considered to serve as a "training ground for future guerrilla fighters", had child soldiers In the same press release it was estimated that some of the government-linked paramilitary units consisted of up to 50 percent children, including some as young as 8 years old.