For decades, the Americas have been the most violent part of the world outside active war zones. Many factors contribute to this, but long-term solutions remain difficult to achieve.
By John P. Ruehl
By mid-2025, U.S. homicide rates were lower than pre-pandemic levels, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. It is a welcome sign, though the decline has been uneven across the country, and wider trends in violent crime remain mixed throughout the Americas.
Since the latter half of the 20th century, outside of war zones, few regions have experienced comparable levels of lethal violence to the Americas. Even Canada, generally low in crime and consistently ranked high on global peace indexes, recorded a higher homicide rate than any other G7 country in 2023 apart from the United States.
Accurate global comparisons remain difficult. Think tanks such as the Igarapé Institute compile extensive data, but differences in record-keeping, definitions of violence, and underreporting complicate the process and fail to capture an accurate picture. Even so, underreporting is global and cannot obscure the violence experienced in the Americas.
Home to just 13 percent of the world’s population, the region’s 154,000 killings accounted for roughly one-third of global homicides in 2021, according to UN data, which stated, “The Americas have the highest regional homicide rate in the world, and high rates of homicidal violence related to organized crime.” The regional homicide rate, around 15 homicide victims per 100,000 people, was nearly triple the global average of 5.8. In fact, 43 of the 50 most violent cities in the world were located in the Americas in 2023.
Young men are disproportionately the victims, largely through inter-gang violence, though many other citizens are caught in the crossfire. While much of the violence is related to criminal activities, it is sustained by a wider set of factors. Addressing the problem will require coordinated, continent-wide efforts, which have so far proven elusive or been shaped by policies from Washington.
Sources of Violence
Inequality and poverty are major drivers of violence in the Americas. High inequality often fuels crime by breeding resentment, eroding social cohesion, and limiting legitimate work opportunities. The Gini coefficient, a standard measure of inequality, consistently places countries in the Americas among the worst worldwide. South Africa, which has Africa’s highest homicide rate and is the only country outside the Americas with multiple cities on the world’s most violent cities list, has a relatively high GDP per capita among African countries, but suffers extreme inequality
Yet inequality alone does not explain the picture. Saudi Arabia also ranks poorly on inequality based on 2019 data, but maintains a very low homicide rate. Additionally, although Pakistan’s GDP per capita is lower than that of most countries in the Americas, its homicide rate is lower compared to theirs, showing that poverty alone is not the only cause for violent crime. Corruption is also widespread in the Americas, but by Transparency International’s measures, it is no worse than in many African or Asian countries.
The region’s experience with urbanization, particularly in Latin America, has been an important contributing factor to the rising crime rates. Latin America’s rapid urbanization during the latter half of the 20th century took place before large-scale industrialization, the reverse of what happened in Europe and much of Asia. The region now has some of the highest urbanization rates in the world, with the rush creating sprawling informal settlements outside state control and social services. Combined with limited employment and education opportunities, these conditions have left large populations vulnerable to exploitation and violence.
The region has also fallen victim to geopolitics. Latin America has long been considered Washington’s backyard, and since the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. has worked to keep out European and later Soviet influence, often backing pliable governments at the cost of strong institutions. This left many states weak, prone to instability, and unable to impose a monopoly on violence or law and order. According to “The Global Safety Report” 2024 by Gallup, the Americas scored lower than most regions outside Africa.
The U.S.-led war on drugs, beginning in the early 1970s, further exacerbated the problem. Washington simultaneously targeted and, at times, cooperated with cartels for geopolitical ends, enriching criminal groups and fueling decades of violence across Latin America and also in U.S. cities, impacted by these actions. These policies continue to be adopted under the Trump administration, leading to “regional tensions.”
Drug trafficking supercharged criminal economies, and homicide rates soared. While some of the worst-hit countries, like Colombia, have seen improvements in the crime rate since 2005, and U.S. violent crime is down from its late-20th-century peaks, the drug wars have left a lasting impact on the Americas.
Firearms have been another accelerant. Roughly 73 percent of murders in Latin America were gun-related, similar to the 80 percent in the U.S. in 2024, compared with a global average of about 40 percent. The flow of weapons stems from legal imports, corruption, local production, and constant smuggling, much of which is tied to the United States. Alongside private purchases, scandals like the “Fast and Furious” and “Wide Receiver” operations revealed the U.S. government’s involvement in helping spread guns to illicit actors in the Americas.
But even when firearms are excluded, violence in the Americas stands out. In the U.S., the country recorded about 0.5 stabbing deaths per 100,000 people in 2021—triple the rate in France and six times higher than the UK.
People are also more likely to commit violence when they believe they can act with impunity, which remains high in the Americas due to overwhelmed or reluctant police and fear of retaliation. “Police forces, judicial systems, and other key institutions struggle with inefficiency and lack of resources. Moreover, the politicization of these institutions further erodes their credibility and effectiveness. … High impunity rates across the region [Latin America]—where only a fraction of homicide cases result in convictions—highlight systemic failures in the justice system. This ineffectiveness not only emboldens criminal organizations but also perpetuates a cycle of violence and lawlessness,” according to an article in Americas Quarterly. In Latin America, only about eight in every 100 homicides lead to a conviction, while in the U.S., nearly half of murders now go unsolved.
Together, these factors create a volatile situation, and violence can quickly take hold. In 2006, Mexico recorded a homicide rate of about five per 100,000 people. After the launch of the government’s war on drug trafficking that year, the reliance on military force against the cartels fractured existing groups, fueling violent competition, and killings soared to roughly 27 per 100,000 people by 2020. Ecuador, once relatively calm, saw homicides more than double from eight per 100,000 in 2020 to 46 per 100,000 in 2023. Even Costa Rica, one of the region’s safest countries, saw its murder rate almost double from 9 to 17 murders per 100,000 people from 2014 to 2023.
Addressing the Issue
Many regions have endured ongoing periods of violence, with Europe suffering from high homicide rates for centuries before they declined in the 20th century. Today, governments from local to national levels across the Americas are testing different approaches to curb violence.
In the U.S. city of Baltimore, long one of the country’s most dangerous cities, its homicide rate has dropped sharply since 2022 under Mayor Brandon Scott, who has pushed a mix of violence intervention programs, more aggressive prosecution, and coordinated community partnerships. San Pedro Sula in Honduras, once the world’s murder capital with 142 killings per 100,000 people in 2014, dropped to 26 per 100,000 by 2023 (alongside declines in other Honduran cities) after police reforms supported by the Honduran government, Inter-American Development Bank, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Still, concerns remain over corruption and the prolonged state of emergency in place since 2022.
Other leaders have opted for harsher measures. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, elected in 2019, suspended civil rights and jailed thousands of suspected gang members, curbing homicide rates from 53 per 100,000 people in 2018 to 2.4 in 2023. The crackdown remains widely popular, showing how dire the situation was, though its long-term consequences are still uncertain.
Ecuador has followed a similar path. After violence rose rapidly in 2020, Daniel Noboa won the presidency in 2023 on a tough-on-crime platform and backed a 2024 constitutional referendum tightening security laws. Following his 2025 reelection, the electoral council approved his request for another referendum on further constitutional changes, with violence remaining high.
Other countries have pursued reconciliation with criminal groups. Venezuela, for instance, had 11 cities among the world’s 50 most violent in 2021, but by 2023, only Caracas remained on the list. This decline is often attributed to government-brokered understandings with gangs, as President Nicolás Maduro consolidated greater control over the country, in a common but controversial tactic.
M multilateral institutions like Interpol exist to combat crime, but coordination among American countries is limited, and the scale of violence is enormous. U.S.-backed security partnerships, such as those with Colombia, meanwhile, depend heavily on political alignment with Washington, alienating some governments, and tensions between the U.S. and Colombia now threaten the continuity of such partnerships.
The region’s crime crisis has also led to a boom in private security beyond traditional war zones. Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, has been exploring security ventures in Haiti, Ecuador, and El Salvador as of 2025. Private city initiatives, like Honduras’ Próspera, are experimenting with their own security models. Yet private forces have proven to be frequently infiltrated by organized crime and rarely address the root causes of violence.
Countries in the Americas continue to rely on fragmented national strategies tailored to their circumstances to address the crisis, with little effective coordination in the region. The underlying conditions that fueled the turmoil, including rapid urbanization before industrialization, inequality, firearms prevalence, and weak states, are also present in parts of Africa. Countries like South Africa and Nigeria have experienced rapid rises in their homicide rates over the last few years, and Africa had the “highest absolute number of homicides” compared to other regions in 2021, with data suggesting no decrease in the homicide rate, according to the UN. Without preventative measures, African nations risk seeing their violent crime rates continue to rise, making the Americas an important reference for cautionary lessons and potential responses.
John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.