Homicides Epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean

SOME CITIES IN COLOMBIA AND BRAZIL ARE DEADLIER THAN WAR-TORN COUNTRIES, ACCORDING TO A NEW INTERACTIVE MAP OF THE WORLD'S MURDERS.
BY CIARA BYRNE

First, some numbers: In 2012, 437,000 people were killed worldwide, yielding a global average murder rate of 6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. A third of those homicides occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, home to just 8% of the world's population. In Brazil, murder is the leading cause of death for young men, while in parts of Europe violent death is a rare and shocking anomaly.

To make this data clear and to begin to understand the dynamics beneath it, the Rio de Janeiro-based Igarapé Institute has created an interactive map, the Homicide Monitor, which brings together all publicly available information on homicide in 219 countries. "A better diagnosis of the scale and scope of homicide can help design prevention and reduction measures," says Robert Muggah, the research director and program coordinator for Citizen Security at Igarapé. "Homicide is a problem that can be solved if we start treating it like a public health issue."

Data on violent death can be difficult to obtain, since governments are often reluctant to share their homicide statistics. What data is available is sometimes inconsistent and inconclusive. "Information on lethal violence is dispersed and often not comparable," says Muggah.

Relying heavily on data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the map tracks the total number of homicides and murder rates per country, broken down by gender, age and, where the data is available, the type of weapon used, including firearms, sharp weapons, blunt weapons, poisoning, and others.

For the most violent region in the world, the 40 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, you can also see statistics by state and city. That geographic specificity helps to underscore an important point about murders, says Muggah, whose previous work has involved tracking gangs on social media and in the real world. "In most cities, the vast majority of violence takes place on just a few street corners, at certain times of the day, and among specific people."