Global homicide rates drop

Global homicide rates drop
Updated 10 December 2014
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Global homicide rates drop

Global homicide rates drop

GENEVA: Global homicide rates have plunged 16 percent since the beginning of the century, but nearly half a million people were still murdered worldwide in 2012, a UN report said Wednesday. Some 475,000 people were murdered around the globe that year, with the highest murder rates found in Latin America, according to the UN’s first report on the status of violence prevention around the world. Four out of five murder victims are men, and homicide remains the third cause of death among males between the ages of 15 and 44, after HIV/AIDS and road accidents, the report found.
Murder meanwhile drops to the fourth cause of death for the same age group when women are added to the mix. Homicide rates have fallen 16 percent worldwide since year 2000, and 39 percent when only high income countries are counted, the report showed. Out of the 133 countries that participated in the study, Honduras appeared to have the highest murder rate, with 103.9 homicides for every 100,000 people, while the murder rate in Venezuela stood at 57.6 and 43.9 in Colombia.