2026-03-17 · percent of world population
Most people live in low-homicide countries
Global averages are pulled up by violent pockets.
Homicide is the most serious of crimes, and your odds of suffering one depend heavily on where you live. Most people live on the safer side of that divide: 70% of the world's population lives in countries with low homicide rates. Global averages are pulled up by a minority of violent pockets — across Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas.
1 cell = 0.1 percent of world population (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells
Context
The grid sorts the world's population by the homicide rate of the country each person lives in, using UNODC figures on intentional homicides per 100,000 people, published via Our World in Data. The low-homicide group is global; the rest of the population is broken out by region.
Seven in ten people live in low-homicide countries. The other three in ten live in Asia and the Pacific (15.6% of the world's population), Africa (8.4%), and the Americas (6%) — the regions that pull the global average upward.
Homicide remains a common cause of death worldwide and a leading cause in some countries, and its harm extends beyond victims to families, communities, and perpetrators. Perceptions can run ahead of the data, though: Our World in Data's January 2026 review finds US violent and property crime far below their 1990s peaks, despite periodic rises in some offenses.
Intentional homicides per 100,000 (UNODC via OWID).
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-03-17-pol-violence-low-rate