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Violent Deaths

Map No. 291

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The violent deaths shown here are homicide (murder and manslaughter), but exclude deaths due to war. In 2002 over half a million people died violent deaths. The territories where the most violent deaths occurred were Brazil and India, each with over 57,000 that year.

The territories where the highest proportion of people were murdered or killed in 2002 were Colombia, Sierra Leone and South Africa. The region with the most violent deaths was South America, followed by Southeastern Africa and Northern Africa. There were relatively few violent deaths resulting from murder or manslaughter in Japan and Western Europe.

"We were returning home when four men with machetes called us. They told my uncle that he knew why they had to kill him. He pleaded with the militia not to kill me …" Alice Musabende, undated

Territory size shows the proportion of violent deaths worldwide that occurred there in 2002. War deaths are not shown here.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page