Global Homicide Rates

El Salvador has the highest homicide rate in the world. The good news for El Salvador is that its homicide rate has actually dropped for three years in succession. In fact the homicide rate in El Salvador has fallen by half since 2015. Unfortunately the current rate of 56.69 homicide per 100,000 people (2017) is still way higher than the rates in most other countries in the world.

You can view an interactive map visualizing the homicide rates in countries around the globe on Our World in Data. Their Homicide Rate map colors individual countries by the number of homicides per 100,000 people in each country. If you want to view the trend over time then just click on a country on the map. You can then view a graph which shows the homicide rate in the selected country by year.


The Homicide Monitor also visualizes homicide rates across the world, only this time on an interactive 3d globe. When you first load the Homicide Monitor the globe animates through the ten countries with the highest homicide rates.

If you pause the animation you can explore the data yourself by selecting individual countries on the map. Click on a country and you can view the country's homicide rate, a graph of the homicide rate over this century, the percentage of those killed by firearms and the percentage of people killed by gender. You can also view where the Homicide Monitor sourced its homicide data for the selected country.

Our World in Data and the Homicide Monitor use different data sources for their homicide rates. The two maps therefore don't always agree on individual country homicide rates or the countries with the largest and smallest homicide rates.