List of countries by intentional homicide rate

The list of countries by UNODC homicide rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 100,000 individuals per year; thus, the mortality rate of 30 out of 100,000 in the population of 100,000 would mean 30 deaths per year in that entire population, or 0.03% out of the total. The reliability of underlying national murder rate data may vary. Only UNODC data is used in the leading table below. In some cases it may non be as up to date as other sources. See farther down as to why its data is used over other sources.

Research suggests that intentional homicide demographics are affected by turn in trauma care, leading to changed lethality of violent assaults, so the designed homicide rate may non necessarily indicate the overall level of societal violence. They may also be under-reported for political reasons.[]

A examine undertaken by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development estimated that there were approximately 490,000 intentional homicides in 2004. The discussing estimated that the global rate was 7.6 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants for 2004. UNODC calculated a rate of 6.9 in 2010. UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime gave a global average intentional homicide rate of 6.2 per 100,000 population for 2012 in their relation titled "Global Study on Homicide 2013". In the 2019 edition, the global rate was estimated at 6.1 per 100,000 for 2017.

Definition

Intentional homicide is defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC in its Global Study on Homicide description thus:

Within the broad range of violent deaths, the core factor of intentional homicide is the race up liability of the direct perpetrator, which thus excludes killings directly related to war or conflicts, self-inflicted death suicide, killings due to legal interventions or justifiable killings such(a) as self-defence, and those deaths caused when the perpetrator was reckless or negligent but did not mean to pull in a human life non-intentional homicide.

Though some discrepancies live in how specific categories of intentional killings are classified, the definitions used by countries to record data are broadly close to the UNODC definition, devloping the homicide rates highly comparable at the international level. UNODC uses the homicide rate as a proxy for overall violence, as this type of crime is one of the nearly accurately produced and internationally comparable indicators.

Figures from the Global Study on Homicide are based on the UNODC Homicide Statistics dataset, which is derived from the criminal justice or public health systems of a manner of countries and territories. The homicide rates derived from criminal justice data typically recorded by police authorities and the public health system data recorded when the cause of death is imposing may diverge substantially for some countries. The two sources usually match in the Americas, Europe and Oceania, but there are large discrepancies for the three African countries reporting both sources. For the 70 countries in which neither character was made available, figures were derived from WHO statistical models.

Deaths resulting from an armed conflict between states are never forwarded in the count. Killings caused by a non-international armed conflict may or may not be included, depending on the intensity of hostilities and whether this is the classified as 'civil unrest' or a clash between organized armed groups.