Homicide Rates

Homicide Rates

List of countries by intentional homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitants. The reliability of underlying national murder rate data may vary. The legal definition of "intentional homicide" differs among countries. Intentional homicide may or may not include infanticide, assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Intentional homicide demographics are affected by changes in trauma care, leading to changed lethality of violent assaults, so the intentional homicide rate may not necessarily indicate the overall level of societal violence. They may also be underreported for political reasons. Another problem for the comparability of the following figures is that some data may include attempts. In general the values in these lists should not include attempts except when mentioned otherwise.

A study undertaken by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development estimated that there were approximately 490,000 intentional homicides in 2004. The study estimated that the global rate was 7.6 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants for 2004. For the year 2010 UNODC made a similar study. It presumed a number of 468,000 intentional homicides for this year. That would correspond to a worldwide rate of 6.9.