Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the world, with 36 per 100,000 people.
“Historic reduction in the homicide rate,” the Honduran government tweeted in a thread celebrating security achievements during President Xiomara Castro’s first year in office. The country’s official rate of 36 murders per 100,000 people in 2022 (down six points from 2021) still places Honduras among Latin America’s — and the world’s — most violent countries. But it represents clear progress since the early 2010s, when the impoverished Central American country seemed caught in a spiral of violence linked to street gangs and drug traffickers, with rates topping 85 murders per 100,000.