Homicide rate by country Europe 2022

In Europe, the Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania had the highest and third highest homicide rates respectively in 2022. Latvia had the highest rate at over four per 100,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, the lowest homicide rate was found in Liechtenstein, with zero murders

The most dangerous country worldwide

Saint Kitts and Nevis is the world's most dangerous country to live in in terms of murder rate. The Caribbean country had a homicide rate of 65 per 100,000 inhabitants. Nine of the 10 countries with the highest murder rates worldwide are located in Latin America and the Caribbean. Whereas Celaya in Mexico was listed as the city with the highest murder rate worldwide, Colima in Mexico was the city with the highest homicide rate in Latin America, so the numbers vary from source to source. Nevertheless, several Mexican cities rank among the deadliest in the world when it comes to intentional homicides.

Violent conflicts worldwide

Notably, these figures do not include deaths that resulted from war or a violent conflict. While there is a persistent number of conflicts worldwide, resulting casualties are not considered murders. Partially due to this reason, homicide rates in Latin America are higher than those in countries such as Ukraine or the DR Congo. A different definition of murder in these circumstances could change the rate significantly.

Homicide rate in Europe in 2022, by country (per 100,000 inhabitants)

Characteristic	Murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants
Latvia	4.05
Turkey	2.46
Lithuania	2.21
Belgium	1.54
Malta	1.54
Finland	1.5
Albania	1.5
Luxembourg	1.39
Estonia	1.35
France	1.21
Montenegro	1.13
Bulgaria	1.11
Sweden	1.11
Iceland	1.06
Serbia	1.03
Denmark	1
North Macedonia	0.98
Romania	0.91
Hungary	0.88
Ireland	0.87
Netherlands	0.81
Croatia	0.8
Cyprus	0.77
Slovakia	0.77
Greece	0.76
Czechia	0.75
Germany	0.74
Austria	0.72
Portugal	0.72
Spain	0.69
Poland	0.69
Slovenia	0.62
Italy	0.55
Norway	0.55
Switzerland	0.48
Liechtenstein	0

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Release date

April 2024

More information

Region

Europe

Survey time period

2022

Supplementary notes

Numbers are unavailable for the United Kingdom, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Liechtenstein .

The figures from 2008 onwards for police-recorded offences are based on the joint Eurostat-UNODC data collection. It is available at country level for European Union Member States, EFTA countries, EU Candidate countries, and EU Potential Candidates.

Intentional Homicide (country and largest city) Definition: Unlawful death inflicted upon a person with the intent to cause death or serious injury. Data on intentional homicide should also include murder, honor killing, serious assault leading to death, death as a result of terrorist activities, dowry-related killings, femicide, infanticide, voluntary manslaughter, extrajudicial killings, killings caused by excessive use of force by law enforcement/state officials. It should exclude death due to legal interventions, justifiable homicide in self-defense, attempted intentional homicide, homicide without the element of intent is non-intentional homicide, non-negligent or involuntary manslaughter, assisting suicide or instigating suicide, illegal feticide, euthanasia.

The data refers to Section Recorded Offences by Offence Category of the Eurostat Database Statistic, online data code CRIM_OFF_CAT.

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