Which countries have the highest murder rates in the world?

Which countries have the highest murder rates in the world? El Salvador is among those that top the list

(CNN Spanish) — After the Caribbean islands of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, two Latin American countries have the highest homicide rate in the world: El Salvador and Honduras top the list of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which has been counting deaths by homicide since 2014. The United States has the highest homicide rate among developed countries.

There were 37.16 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in El Salvador in 2019, according to the most recent data from UNODC. Three years later, on Saturday, March 27, 2022, the Central American country experienced the most violent day since Nayib Bukele assumed the presidency in June 2019. The police and the Government then attributed the responsibility to the gangs for the increase in the number of homicides.

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For Tiziano Breda, an analyst for Central America at the International Crisis Group (ICG), the increase in murders is one of the pressure measures that gangs have used in the past and continue to use in El Salvador.

“They have always been messages from the gangs to the governments. But this is worrying because of the number of homicides, the most violent day of the Bukele administration,” Breda said.

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According to UN experts, the main reason for high murder rates in America is due to organized crime. In Honduras, where the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants was 36.33 in 2020, a phenomenon similar to that of El Salvador occurs.

“Drugs in Honduras… here there is a way for everything and the consolidation of drug traffickers in the first place. Second, the maras and gangs dominate the territories more than the state,” Migdonia Ayestas, director of the Observatory, explained to CNN of Violence of the National Autonomous University of Honduras.

It is important to note that none of these Latin American countries are at war. However, America is the continent with the most murders, registering 160,800 of the 436,900 deaths in the world in 2020 due to homicide, which the UNODC defines as killing someone intentionally without including suicides or deaths that occurred in wars.

“Since the beginning of the 21st century, organized crime has killed as many people as all armed conflicts around the world combined,” says the UN.

Here’s a look at the most recent UN data for the countries with the highest homicide rates:

Jamaica 44.68 (per 100,000 inhabitants)

Trinidad and Tobago 38.57

El Salvador 37.16

Honduras 36.33

South Africa 33.46