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| Photo by Pope Moysuh on Unsplash |
For what it's worth, if you want to bone up on your world geography, this might be one way to go. We have a number of countries on Planet Earth that I bet you've never heard of. Do you know where Eswatini is? How about Eritrea or Seycelles?
What I wanted to do here was list the data and then draw a few hypothetical conclusions.
Here are all the countries with more than 30 homicides per 100,000 people:
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| Data Source |
Honduras -- 67
Venezuela -- 63
Jamaica -- 50
Lesotho -- 43
Trinidad -- 39
Colombia -- 38
Bahamas -- 38
Belize -- 37
South Africa -- 36
Brazil -- 32.5
Countries with homicide rates in the 20s per 100K population, in descending order: St. Vincent, Mexico, Guatemala, Guyana, and Central African Republic. St. Lucia and Haiti each have 20 as well.
Countries with homicide rates in the teens, in descending order: Eswatini, Nambia, Dominican Republic, Panama, Botswana, Seyceles, Iraq, South Sudan, Uganda, Philippines, Cabo Verge, Zimbabwe, Dem. Republic of Congo, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Barbados, Papua New Guinea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Mali, and Congo.
Yemen, Liberia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru, Angola, Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Chad, Togo, Guinea, Uraguay, Gabon, Afghanistan, Gambia, Tanzania, Paraguay, Sierra Leone, Russian Federation, Senegal, Comoros, Ethiopia -- all these have from 9.7 to 7.
Here are your sixes: Ecuador, Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic, Grenada, Burundi, Dijbouti, Madagascar, Zambia, Camaroon, Ukraine, Benin, Ghana, Mongolia and Argentina.
The average homicide rate overall for the world is 6 homicides per 100,000 population.
We enter the fives with Pakistan (5.9), Suriname (5.79), Sudan (5.78) and finally the U.S. at 5.77 homicides per 100,000. In other words, nearly half the world has a lower score than we do when it comes to homicides.
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As I consider these things I'm reminded of how we are told that it's not good to compare yourself to others. Yes, it would be a temptation to feel good about knowing that there are more than 70 countries with higher homicide rates, many with two, three, five times as many as us, and three with more than ten times as many. But looking at the other end of the scale, one has to wonder, "What's wrong with this picture?" The most civilized countries don't murder people at the rate we do.
When we look at Japan, Singapore, Bahrain, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Qatar, the numbers are so low that they are practically zero. Japan has 126 million people and less than one murder per day on average.
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Taken as a whole, the most dangerous part of the world in terms of homicide rates is Central America. No wonder so many people South of our border have been fleeing North. It may not be paradise when they arrive, but it's safer than where they come from. What are the root causes of this social dysfunction?
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The matter of gun ownership has been a bone of contention in recent years here. Is there a relationship between guns and homicide?
The U.S. has more guns per capita than anyone, averaging 120.5 guns per every 100 people. The ratio of guns per capita does not entirely correspond to homicide rates. Switzerland, for example, has lots of guns, ranking 19th overall, but has nearly zero homicides. Finland, which is 10th overall in gun ownership is similarly amongst the lowest in homicides as well.
You might think that having more guns than everyone else would mean more homicides, but that conclusion doesn't hold up either.
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Conclusions
I'm not really sure what to think of all these numbers yet. I got curious last night, and decided to do a brief survey. It's obviously we've only scratched the surface here.
Here are the links to the data I gathered above.
WHO: Estimates of Rates of Homicides Per 100,000 Population
Ranking of Countries Were Gun Ownership Is Restricted
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