UNODC aims to provide enhanced knowledge of thematic and cross-sectoral trends for effective policy formulation, operational response and impact assessment in drugs and crime. Pursuant to this objective, UNODC has developed a dataset providing an overview of available statistics related to the crime of homicide, with the aim of achieving as broad a geographic coverage as possible.
The dataset is intended to represent a starting point for further research and analysis with a view to improving the availability of crime and criminal justice information and expanding knowledge of crime trends.

The dataset, which covers 198 countries/territories, provides intentional homicide rates per 100,000 population for the year 2004. The dataset has been elaborated by UNODC from a variety of sources, including data provided to the " United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems" (CTS), data collected by other cross-national crime statistics sources, international public health data, and national law enforcement and criminal justice data sources. Where sufficient data is available, a range for the number of homicides per 100,000 population captured by different sources of administrative statistics was calculated. All sources used are fully referenced in the dataset and a methodological description is provided in supporting metadata.
While UNODC works predominantly with criminal justice data sources, the dataset also presents public health data with a view to providing as complete a dataset as possible. Country-level criminal justice data sources, together with public health data for Africa region derived from this dataset, have previously been compiled and presented as overall regional and sub-regional homicide rates per 100,000 population. The results of this analysis have been published in Chapter Four of the Global Burden of Armed Violence Report,available at:

http://www.genevadeclaration.org/pdfs/Global-Burden-of-Armed-Violence.pdf

Homicide rates per 100,000 population for the sixteen sub-regions of East Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, West and Central Africa, Caribbean, Central America, North America, South America, Central Asia and Transcaucasian Countries, East Asia, Near and Middle East/South West Asia, South Asia, East Europe, South East Europe, West and Central Europe, Oceania as published in the Global Burden of Armed Violence report are reproduced in the map below:

Intentional homicide, rate per 100,000 population, by sub-region, 2004