Sovereign rows of the UNODC “Intentional homicide rate per 100,000 population” series via Our World in Data. Top 30 by most recent year. Aggregates excluded.
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How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Homicide Rate by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by Our World in Data (mostly re-published World Bank / UN public statistics) (OWID Grapher slug “homicide-rate-unodc”). Values are expressed in per 100,000 population.
What to watch. Follow El Salvador: from the world’s worst homicide rate to a dramatic collapse in the 2020s under its security crackdown — the sharpest single-country move on the chart. It also throws Japan’s steady ~0.3 per 100,000 into stark relief.
Caveats. Definitions of intentional homicide and reporting rates differ across countries, and weak statistical systems can understate the true toll. In small countries a handful of cases moves the rate sharply, so treat single-year rank changes with care.
Trends in the data
Colombia’s decline is the largest single change in this table: 75.00 per 100,000 in 1990, 62.34 in 1995, 70.40 in 2002, 42.99 in 2005, 34.52 in 2010, 27.22 in 2015, 22.64 in 2020 and 24.91 in 2023 — a third of the peak. A country that in 1990 stood 2.6× above second-placed Lesotho (28.68) now ranks sixth. That a country sustained a decline for 33 years is worth recording, even among these top 30.
Countries moving the other way are equally clear. Ecuador rose from 8.52 in 1990 to 45.72 in 2023, a 5.37× increase that took it from 14th to 2nd — from among the lowest of the thirty to the second highest. Saint Lucia went from 10.16 to 39.04, 3.84×, 11th to 4th; Honduras from 9.95 to 31.44, 3.16×, 12th to 5th; and Jamaica from 22.86 to 49.30, 2.16×, taking first place. Within a single group labelled “high homicide”, the directions of travel are opposite.
The 30-country average rose from 17.34 in 1990 to a peak of 30.37 in 2010 and stands at 27.23 in 2023 — worsening through the 1990s and 2000s, improving gradually since. The spread between top and bottom narrowed from 75.00 to 35.63, but that reflects the top coming down rather than the bottom going up. Even the lowest country in 2023, Grenada at 13.67, sits roughly 2.5× the world average.
The most important thing to watch in this series is how much the number of reporting countries varies. There are 16 in 1990, 23 by 2000 and 26 by 2007 — but only 14 in 2023. The “latest-year ranking” is a ranking among the fourteen countries that reported. Homicide statistics differ by country in both definition and reporting rate, and reporting lags are large. Following the long-run direction of a single country’s line is more reliable here than tracking year-to-year rank changes. Note also that the top 30 is cut by latest value, so countries with the world’s lowest rates, such as Japan and South Korea, are not included.
Trivia quiz
In what unit is the homicide rate usually compared internationally?
Per 100,000 population — the standard way to compare countries of different sizes fairly. (Source)
Which UN agency compiles international crime statistics such as homicide?
UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime), the main source of global intentional-homicide data. (Source)
What factors are often cited for the high homicide rates in parts of Latin America?
Drug-cartel conflict, political instability and severe inequality; the region as a whole runs well above the world average. (Source)