Where are the World's MOST VIOLENT Regions? Perhaps not Where you Think

Latin America is the world's most violent region, accounting for nearly one in three global homicides, according to data from a new study by the United Nations. 

Latin America racked up some 134,519 homicides in 2012, about 31% of the total for that year, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime's Global Study on Homicide, its first since 2011. Yet the region's 574 million people comprise just 8% of the global population, according to U.N. figures.

As a whole, Latin America's per capita homicide rate is 23.4 per 100,000 people, nearly double the rate in Africa, which is sometimes mistakenly believed to be the most violent continent. Venezuela is the only country in the region with a consistently rising homicide rate since 1994, the report said.

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"Latin America as a region has the highest rate of criminal violence in the world," said Angela Me, the chief of research at the UNODC. "Yet parts of the region, like Chile and Argentina, have far lower homicide rates. The problem really is northern South America and Central America," including Mexico, she added. 

The study tallied 440,000 homicides around the world during 2012, using mostly reports from law enforcement in member states. In some parts of Africa, the agency relied on estimates from the World Health Organization.

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