The Associated Press writes that the increase in child members is related to the worsening of poverty in the country, increasing violence, and political instability.

When Kenyan police arrived in Haiti as part of a U.N.-backed mission earlier this year to quell gang violence, hopes were high.

Gang violence surged in Haiti, with a paroxysm of bloodshed leaving at least 150 dead and driving the charity Doctors Without Borders to suspend its operations in the country. Haiti has been racked by armed groups who operate with impunity, unrestrained by a government that controls little of the nation’s actual territory.

When Kenyan police arrived in Haiti as part of a U.N.-backed mission earlier this year to quell gang violence, hopes were high

As gangs escalate violence in Haiti, the UN Security Council debates upgrading the current security mission to a peacekeeping force despite opposition from Russia and China.

More than 20,000 people have been displaced across Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince in four days, a UN agency said Saturday, as residents flee gang violence that has crippled the troubled Caribbean nation.