Statistics on Violence
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A more descriptive post on violence is here.
Content:
1. Overview
2. Fatal interpersonal violence, i.e. homicide
3. Non-fatal interpersonal violence
4. Self-inflicted violence; suicide
5. Collective violence and war
6. Terrorist violence
1. Overview
Worldwide, an estimated 1,6 million people lost their lives to violence in 2000. About half were suicides (and obviously not human rights violations), one-third were homicides, and one-fifth were casualties of armed conflict (World Report on Violence and Health, World Health Organization, 2002).
Violence is among the leading causes of death for people aged 15–44 years worldwide, accounting for 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females.
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2. Fatal interpersonal violence, i.e. homicide
Here’s a world map with the number of murders or homicides per 100.000 inhabitants during the last years:
(source)
And here are the same data for some selected countries:
(source)
(source)
And this is how the homicide rate in the U.S. evolved during the last decades:
(source)
All in all, this is still almost 20.000 murders a year in the U.S. (more data on crime in the US. here). On the level of the World, an estimated 520.000 people were killed in 2000 as a result of interpersonal violence worldwide – a rate of 8,8 per 100.000 population. (source)
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3. Non-fatal interpersonal violence
For every person who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer other harms (psychological, financial etc.). One example is rape. The following graph shows the number of attempted and completed cases of rape in the U.S.:
(source)
(source)
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4. Self-inflicted violence; suicide
Globally, an estimated 815.000 people killed themselves in 2000. (source)
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5. Collective violence and war
This includes armed conflicts within or between states, and state-perpetrated violence such as genocide, torture, repression, some kinds of famine and poverty, and other abuses of human rights.
Since the beginning of recorded history, around 3600 BC, over 14.500 major wars have killed close to four billion people.
During the 20th century, one of the most violent periods in human history, an estimated 191 million people lost their lives directly or indirectly as a result of armed conflict, and well over half of them were civilians. In 2000, about 310 000 people died as a direct result of conflict-related injuries – the majority of them in the poorer parts of the world. (source)
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6. Terrorist violence
More data on terrorist attacks are here.
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