A Brazilian think tank has compiled global homicide statistics in an interactive map, and the results are in: you are most likely to lose your life in Latin America.
The Homicide Monitor, compiled using comprehensive data from 2012, reveals that a third of the world’s 450,000 murders were perpetrated in Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
Specifically, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela and Brazil are among the countries where murders are most common.
The map draws on information from the United Nations, as well as statistics from governments around the world, detailing murders by country, year, age of victim, gender, and the type of weapon used.
Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world.
It finds that victims are most likely to be young, black or mixed race men who reside in poor and disadvantaged communities.
It also highlights the pronounced homicide rate between developed and less developed nations. For example, the map indicates Australia has a homicide count of 1 per 100,000 inhabitants, while Papua New Guinea has 10.4.
The Igarapé Institute, the think tank which assembled the map, said that it was designed with a wide variety of users in mind.
'The goal is to show policy makers, journalists, scholars, and activists how lethal violence is distributed, whether spatially, temporally or demographically,' a think thank spokesperson said.
'Some countries and population groups are much more at risk of dying violently than others. A better diagnosis of how homicide is spread can help in the design of effective violence prevention and reduction measures.'
