United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - Homicide Statistics 2012

UNODC Homicide Statistics provide users with a reference for the largest number of countries and the longest time series on homicide data possible. A variety of national and international sources on homicide have been considered to compile UNODC Homicide Statistics and, in order to present accurate and comparable statistics, data have been selected which conform as much as possible to the definition of intentional homicide used by UNODC for statistical purpose: "unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person".

All existing data sources on intentional homicides, both at national and international level, stem from either criminal justice or public health systems. In the former case, data are generated by law enforcement or criminal justice authorities in the process of recording and investigating a crime event while, in the latter, data are produced by health authorities certifying the cause of death of an individual. Public health data on homicides were derived from databases on deaths by cause disseminated by WHO, both at central level and through some of its regional offices.

Data included in the dataset correspond to the original value provided by the source of origin, since no statistical procedure or modelling was used to change collected values or to create new or revised figures.

Source type:
CJ: Criminal Justice
PH: Public Health
Data sources:
CTS: United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (CTS)
Eurostat: The statistical office of the European Union. Offences recorded by the police.
GBI: Global Burden of Injuries, Injury Mortality Data Collection
Interpol: International Criminal Justice organization
NGO: Non-governmental organization
NSO: National Statistical Office
OAS: Organization of American States - Observatory on Citizen Security. Number of offences of intentional homicide recorded by the police.
OCAVI: Observatorio Centroamericano sobre Violencia - The Central American Observatory on Violence. Sourced from national police data.
PAHO: Pan American Health Organization's Core Health Data System
SES: Regional System of Standardized Citizen Security and Coexistence Indicators
Transmonee: UNICEF TransMONEE Database. Innocenti Research Centre, Florence
UN-OCHA: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Integrated Regional Information Network
UN-PKO: UN Peacekeeping Operations
WHO: World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease Mortality Estimates