List of countries by intentional homicide rate

The list of countries by homicide rate is derived from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) data, and is expressed in number of deaths per 100,000 population per year.

[7][8][page needed] A study undertaken by the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development estimated that there were approximately 490,000 intentional homicides globally in 2004, for a rate of 7.6 per 100,000.

[5][13] Intentional homicide is defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its Global Study on Homicide report[15] thus: Within the broad range of violent deaths, the core element of intentional homicide is the complete 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 as self-defence), and those deaths caused when the perpetrator was reckless or negligent but did not intend to take a human life (non-intentional homicide).

[16] UNODC uses the homicide rate as a proxy for overall violence, as this type of crime is one of the most accurately reported and internationally comparable indicators.

[19] All data in this section comes from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) website.

The countries with the most homicides per unit population are generally countries with small populations (very narrow rectangles in chart, 2021). [ 1 ]
The class of violent deaths documented in this article is intentional killing of others outside of war. Deaths occurring during situations of civil unrest are a grey area.
Map of countries by their intentional homicide rate per 100,000 people. Source (labeled on map): United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime . [ 14 ]
United Nations geoscheme with region names in the UNODC data source used in table here