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The purpose of this indicator is to measure the most extreme form of violent crime and also provide a direct indication of lack of security.

The indicator is defined as the total count of victims of intentional homicide divided by the total population, expressed per 100,000 population. Intentional homicide is defined as the unlawful death inflicted upon a person with the intent to cause death or serious injury (Source: International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes, ICCS 2015); population refers to total resident population in a given country in a given year.

Police Department

Police Department

Quarterly

Expressed per 100,000 population

Security from violence is a pre-requisite for individuals to enjoy a safe and active life and for societies and economies to develop freely. Intentional homicides occur in all countries of the world and this indicator has a global applicability. Monitoring intentional homicides is necessary to better assess their causes, drivers and consequences and, in the longer term, to develop effective preventive measures. If data are properly disaggregated (as suggested in the ICCS), the indicator can identify the different type of violence associated with homicide: inter-personal (including partner and family-related violence), crime (including organized crime and other forms of criminal activities) and socio-political (including terrorism, hate crime).

In the ICCS, intentional homicide is defined as the ‘‘Unlawful death inflicted upon a person with the intent to cause death or serious injury”. This definition contains three elements characterizing the killing of a person as intentional homicide:

1. The killing of a person by another person (objective element);
2. The intent of the perpetrator to kill or seriously injure the victim (subjective element);
3. The unlawfulness of the killing, which means that the law considers the perpetrator liable for the unlawful death (legal element).

This definition states that, for statistical purposes, all killings corresponding to the three criteria above should be considered as intentional homicides, irrespective of definitions provided by national legislations or practices.

Recommended disaggregation for this indicator are: Sex and age of the victim and the perpetrator (suspected offender) Relationship between victim and perpetrator (intimate partner, other family member, acquaintance, etc.) Means of perpetration (firearm, blunt object, etc.) Situational context/motivation (organized crime, intimate partner violence, etc.).

The indicator is calculated as the total number of victims of intentional homicide recorded in a given year divided by the total resident population in the same year, multiplied by 100,000.

The indicator is used to measure the most extreme form of violent crime.

N/A

The fact that homicide data are typically produced by two separate and independent sources at national level (criminal justice and public health) represents a specific asset of this indicator, as the comparison of the two sources is a tool to assess accuracy of national data. Usually, for countries where data from both sources exist, a good level of matching between the sources is recorded. Data on homicides produced by public health authorities are guided by the International classification of diseases (ICD-10), which provides a definition of ‘Death by assault’ that is very close to the definition of intentional homicide of the ICCS.

All the metadata shown was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.