America Is Most Dangerous Continent, With 36 Percent Of World Homicides, Says New U.N. Study

America is the continent with the most number of murders in the world and Honduras has the worst homicide rate of them all, according to a new report by the United Nations. The report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime indicates that, in 2012, there were 437,000 homicides in the world and 36 percent of them occurred in the American continent, followed by Africa with 31 percent and Asia with 28 percent. Europe had only 5 percent and Oceania just .3 percent.

Considering that the global average homicide rate is 6.2 victims per 100,000 inhabitants, the rate is four times as high in southern Africa and Central America. The report indicates that the high level of crime in the continent are the result of both political instability and the presence of generalized crime, which, according to statistics, had an increase of 8.5 percent in the American continet between 2010 and 2012. Honduras has the continent's highest murder rate with 90.4 murders per hundred thousand inhabitants.

uThe UN placed Venezuela as second behind Honduras with 53.7 murder per 100,000 inhabitants. Next was Beliz with 44.7; El Salvador with 41. 2 and then Colombia with 30.8. The continents biggest economies, Brazil and Mexico, had a rate of 25.2 and 21.5 respectively. The report indicated that although the American continent had the highest numbers, it varied greatly from country to country. Central America, the report suggested, had a decline in homicide rates between 1995 and 2004 but had a sharp increase in 2007.