Brazil leads the world ranking by the number of violent deaths, Russia - European - Experts Club

Brazil, India and Mexico have the highest estimated number of deaths from interpersonal violence in the world, while Russia leads the extended European sample both in absolute terms and per population. These are the results of a comparison of international data conducted by the Experts Club information and analytical center on the basis of the study Global Burden of Disease 2023 of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington - IHME.

At the same time, these results describe model estimates of mortality. They cannot be automatically equated to the number of homicides recorded by the police or used as a universal ranking of the security of countries.

According to the authors of Global Burden of Disease 2023, the results of which were published in The Lancet in 2025, the study of causes of death covers 204 countries and territories. Interpersonal violence death rates for 2023 are also available on the Our World in Data platform, which updated the relevant pages on February 7, 2026.

Selecting a single year avoids mixing up rates from different periods. However, it does not eliminate differences in the completeness of primary information: for some states, detailed death registers are available, for others, the assessment depends much more on statistical models.

In this material, absolute numbers are taken directly from the IHME "number of deaths from interpersonal violence". They were not calculated due to the multiplication of rounded coefficients by the population from another database. Such a recalculation may create additional discrepancies due to different demographic estimates and loss of precision during rounding.

According to the IHME, in 2023 there were approximately 435,700 deaths from interpersonal violence worldwide. This is about 1.2 thousand deaths every day. The overall rate presented by Our World in Data was approximately 5.4 per 100,000 population.

The scale of uncertainty remains significant even at the global level. As the authors of GBD 2023 report in The Lancet, the 95 percent uncertainty interval of the global estimate is approximately 384,100 to 507,900 deaths. Therefore, the accuracy of displaying the number to one person does not mean that each case is confirmed by a separate entry in the register.

According to the direct absolute estimates of the IHME, the first fifteen countries for the year 2023 look like this:

According to IHME data provided by Our World in Data, all values in the table are model estimates for 2023, rounded to whole numbers

Calculated based on these figures, Brazil, India and Mexico accounted for approximately 30.5% of the global estimate of deaths from interpersonal violence. Together with the USA and South Africa, the share of the first five reached 41.4%. The share of Brazil itself was about 12%.

India's high position in the absolute ranking is largely due to its population. According to IHME, its rate was about 3.1 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants, while in Brazil – 24.6, in Mexico – 27.6, in South Africa – 36.0. Therefore, a large number of dead in a populous state can be combined with a relatively low rate per inhabitant.

Refining the absolute estimates also changes the composition of the top fifteen: it includes Haiti. Pakistan, with approximately 6.1 thousand deaths, is in the next position.

A comparison per 100 thousand population shows a different geography of the highest values. According to IHME, the first twenty positions among sovereign states in 2023 were occupied by:

According to the IHME, 13 of these 20 countries are located in Latin America and the Caribbean, and another seven are in Africa. Dependent territories are not included in this table. For example, the US Virgin Islands have a rate of 42.4 per 100,000 in the same set, so their inclusion would change the numbering of positions.

El Salvador needs special attention. The given 56.3 per 100,000 actually corresponds to the IHME model rate for 2023. However, as reported by the National Civil Police of El Salvador on January 3, 2024, the country ended 2023 with 154 registered murders and an officially declared rate of 2.4 per 100,000 population.

At the same time, the UNODC database, updated on July 12, 2026, for El Salvador in 2023 lists 321 victims of of intentional murders and a ratio of about 5.1. Therefore, not only the IHME model and national police reports diverge, but also the international database and primary government summary.

The reasons for this discrepancy require a separate comparison of coverage, death classification and primary data used. The mere presence of a model estimate is not enough to declare El Salvador the country with the highest number of actual recorded murders per capita.

A comparison for the same year 2023 shows how much the choice of source affects the results:

According to IHME/Our World in Data and UNODC, the indicators in the table belong to 2023; for UNODC, the 12 July 2026 update was used. Values ​​are rounded to one decimal place.

The differences are not in one direction: IHME gives a higher indicator for Russia and El Salvador, but a lower one for South Africa, Ecuador and Jamaica. Therefore, it would be wrong to explain the difference only by "police underreporting".

As stated in the UNODC methodology, intentional homicide is defined as the unlawful causing of death with the intent to kill or cause grievous hurt. The data comes from the criminal justice and health systems. For global and regional summaries, UNODC also fills statistical gaps through assessments. Therefore, the statement that this organization does not use calculation methods at all needs to be corrected.

In the European part of the analysis, Experts Club used an extended sample, which, in addition to European countries, includes Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. This is the author's geographic sample, which is not the same as the official regional groupings of the UN.

Russia is represented by a national indicator covering its entire territory. The given data do not make it possible to evaluate only the European part of the Russian Federation separately.

According to IHME/Our World in Data, the expanded European table for 2023 looks like this:

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Countries are listed in source sorting order. Coefficients are rounded to one decimal place, absolute values ​​are rounded to whole persons. For Kosovo, Liechtenstein and the Vatican, there are no comparable values ​​in the IHME table used.

The indicator "less than one death" is the result of modeling. It does not mean a part of the actual dead person, but reflects the average calculated value for a small population. Likewise, the difference between neighboring ranking places does not in itself prove a statistically significant difference between countries.

According to IHME/Our World in Data, the regional rate for Europe was about 3.3 deaths per 100,000 population. The Russian coefficient exceeded it by approximately 3.4 times, the Ukrainian one by 2.2 times. These ratios refer specifically to the IHME estimates and the geographical grouping of the corresponding source.

In terms of absolute numbers, Russia and Ukraine are followed by Turkey, France and Poland in the extended sample. At the same time, countries with a small population can have a relatively high coefficient for a small number of deaths. For example, for Montenegro, IHME estimates about 15 deaths and a rate of 2.3 per 100,000, for Germany - approximately 305 deaths and 0.4 per 100,000.

To assess registered crime in the European Union, it is advisable to separately consider Eurostat data. As reported by Eurostat in a publication dated April 23, 2025, the police of EU countries registered 3,930 intentional homicides in 2023 – 1.5% more than the year before, but 15.2% less than in 2013, when the figure was 4,635.

The highest absolute values in this publication are given for France – 887, Germany – 661 and Italy – 338. The smallest – for Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus: two, four and ten, respectively.

Eurostat clarifies that it is about offenses registered by the police. The number of crimes, the number of victims and the model number of deaths are separate statistical values: one crime can have several victims. Because of this, the simple transfer of numbers from different tables to a common rating can distort the comparison.

For Ukraine, it is also necessary to distinguish between interpersonal violence and deaths due to war. In the GBD classification, interpersonal violence and conflict and terrorism are separate causes of death. The figure of 7.4 per 100,000 is not an estimate of Ukraine's total loss of life from the Russian invasion.

IHME's Ukrainian estimate of approximately 2,894 deaths in 2023 cannot be represented as the number of criminal homicides confirmed by the National Police. Similarly, the second place of Ukraine in this model European sample does not mean the second place according to the current comparative police statistics: there are no Ukrainian data for the year 2023 in the verified UNODC database.

As reported by the National Police of Ukraine in the results published on January 21, 2025, 1,052 intentional murders were committed in 2024, among the victims - 1 120 people. The report lists 829 men, 254 women and 37 children.

According to the same report of the National Police, 183 murders were committed with firearms, 435 with melee weapons, 33 with grenades and explosives. Firearms were used in approximately 17.4% of these cases, cold weapons - in 41.3%. This is a calculation of percentages from the number of crimes, not from the number of victims.

These figures for 2024 are given as separate national statistics and are not included in the international tables for 2023. In the conditions of war, the comparability of Ukrainian data is affected by occupation, population displacement, incomplete registration of deaths, and the uncertainty of the number of people who actually live in the relevant territory. Because of this, arbitrarily dividing the number of crimes by any available population estimate will not give a reliable international coefficient.

More recent global data should also be considered separately from the IHME ranking. According to the UNODC in the July 12, 2026 update, the global estimate of the number of victims of intentional killings was about 423,200 in 2023 and 419,900 in 2024. The ratio decreased from about 5.23 to 5.14 per 100,000 population.

Calculated on the basis of this UNODC series, the decrease in absolute numbers was about 0.8%. This change must be compared within the same source: the difference between the IHME estimate for 2023 and the UNODC estimate for 2024 cannot be interpreted as an annual reduction in homicides.

UNODC regional estimates for 2024 show the following differences:

According to UNODC, Africa had the highest absolute number of victims, while the highest regional rate was in the Americas. This is another example of why absolute and relative indicators answer different questions.

The dynamics of individual countries also differed significantly. According to the same UNODC database, the number of victims in Brazil decreased from 43,443 in 2023 to 39,625 in 2024 - approximately 8.8%. In Haiti, it increased from 4,789 to 7,574, or about 58.2%. A slight change in the global total can hide a sharp deterioration in the situation in individual states.

The distribution by gender shows another dimension of the problem. According to UNODC global estimates for 2024, the victims included approximately 336,800 men and boys and 83,100 women and girls. The share of the male population among the dead was about 80%.

At the same time, the circumstances of murders for women differ significantly. According to UN Women and UNODC in a joint report, Femicide in 2024, approximately 50,000 women and girls have been killed by intimate partners or other family members. This is about 60% of all intentionally killed women and girls and an average of 137 deaths every day.

The authors of the report separately warn: the lower number compared to the estimate of 51,100 for 2023 cannot automatically be considered a real improvement. The difference was largely influenced by the availability of national data.

For a practical analysis of violence, along with the country's place in the ranking, it is necessary to take into account long-term dynamics, territorial coverage, gender and age of the victims, the use of weapons and the connection between the victim and the attacker. It is these characteristics that help distinguish the violence of organized criminal groups from family violence and other circumstances that require different prevention measures.