Sunday, October 09, 2011
Honduras' Maras Drug Gang
Mexico’s crackdown on drug cartels has pushed more organized crime into Central America, turning Honduras and other countries into killing zones.
According to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras has the world’s highest homicide rate: 82.1 per 100,000 people. Last year, 6,200 people were murdered in the country, out of a population of 7.7 million.
The second highest rate occurred in neighboring El Salvador, where 4,000 homicides happened out of 6.1 million people for a rate of 66.0 per 100,000.
Cote D’Ivoire in West Africa followed with a 56.9 homicide rate, then Jamaica with 52.1 and Venezuela at 49.0.
The United States’ rate was only five per 100,000 people.
Reasonably large nations with noteworthy low murder rates included Japan (0.5), Austria (0.5), Singapore (0.5), Norway (0.6) and Slovenia (0.6).
-Noel Brinkerhoff
UN Study: Homicides Soar in Central America (by Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press)
Global Study on Homicide (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) (pdf)
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