Male Homicide Rate, 2021

this graph was created in Loocker studio, PowerBi and Tableau:

Measuring homicides across the world helps us understand violent crime and how people are affected by interpersonal violence.

But measuring homicides is challenging. Even homicide researchers do not always agree on the characteristics that define a homicide. Even when a definition is agreed upon, it is difficult to count each homicide.

In many countries, national civil registries do not certify most deaths or their cause. Besides lacking funds and personnel, a body has to be found to determine a death has happened. And they may struggle to distinguish a homicide from a similar cause of death, such as being killed in an armed conflict.

Law enforcement and criminal justice agencies collect more data on whether a death was unlawful — but their definition of unlawfulness may differ across countries and time.

Estimating homicides where neither of these sources is available or good enough is difficult. Estimates rely on inferences from similar countries and contextual factors that are based on strong assumptions. So how do researchers address these challenges and measure homicides?