The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its Global Study On Crime 2013 homicide statistics report last week. Latin America leads the world, with 31 percent of the world’s murders despite having approximately only 9 percent of the world’s population. The new figures remain relatively the same compared to previous years, with homicide rates decreasing in only a few countries in the region.
Belize and four other countries in the region continue to take the lead with the highest murder rates in the world. The other hotspots for murders are Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and just further south, Venezuela. The grim statistics have just been published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, known as U.N.O.C.D., which also concludes that Latin America, with only nine percent of the global population, experiences a shocking thirty-one percent of the world’s murder. In our backyard, Honduras is the deadliest country in the world; Venezuela is second, Belize is placed third with a murder rate of forty-four point seven percent and El Salvador is fourth. The bright spot in Central America is Costa Rica which has the lowest homicide rate. According to the report, drugs, gangs, firearms and weak governments have long been blamed for fuelling the persistent levels of violence in the region, especially in the “Northern Triangle” region of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.