Interpersonal Violence
Age-standardized death rate per 100,000, violence
This 2004 rate ranking includes countries with at least 1,000,000 residents in that same year (149 eligible of 189 reporting). Cohort median among eligible countries: 2.9 per 100K pop. In smaller populations, a few modelled deaths can move a per-100,000 rate sharply, so microstates are excluded from this ordered list.
Countries with Highest Interpersonal Violence Rate
#1 in the 2004 comparison: South Africa at 121.1 per 100K pop (same-year population 48,991,421) - about 41.8x the eligible-cohort median of 2.9. These are published estimates, which can change with modelling revisions and reporting completeness.
| Rank | Country | per 100K pop | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | 121.1 | 2004 |
| 2 | Cote d'Ivoire | 103.4 | 2004 |
| 3 | Guatemala | 96.4 | 2004 |
| 4 | El Salvador | 75.7 | 2004 |
| 5 | Jamaica | 64.8 | 2004 |
| 6 | Rwanda | 61.2 | 2004 |
| 7 | Brazil | 55.6 | 2004 |
| 8 | Uganda | 55.6 | 2004 |
| 9 | Zambia | 51.7 | 2004 |
| 10 | Sudan | 51.0 | 2004 |
| 11 | Honduras | 46.7 | 2004 |
| 12 | Ecuador | 45.9 | 2004 |
| 13 | Niger | 45.1 | 2004 |
| 14 | Philippines | 44.9 | 2004 |
| 15 | Kenya | 43.6 | 2004 |
| 16 | Malawi | 42.9 | 2004 |
| 17 | Eswatini | 40.6 | 2004 |
| 18 | Zimbabwe | 37.7 | 2004 |
| 19 | Burkina Faso | 37.2 | 2004 |
| 20 | Central African Republic | 36.0 | 2004 |
| 21 | Paraguay | 35.9 | 2004 |
| 22 | Eritrea | 34.6 | 2004 |
| 23 | Nicaragua | 31.4 | 2004 |
| 24 | Cameroon | 30.2 | 2004 |
| 25 | Gabon | 29.3 | 2004 |
| 26 | Lesotho | 28.9 | 2004 |
| 27 | Myanmar | 28.0 | 2004 |
| 28 | Togo | 27.0 | 2004 |
| 29 | Russian Federation | 26.7 | 2004 |
| 30 | Namibia | 26.6 | 2004 |
| 31 | Ethiopia | 25.7 | 2004 |
| 32 | Mozambique | 25.6 | 2004 |
| 33 | Kazakhstan | 25.0 | 2004 |
| 34 | Mali | 23.5 | 2004 |
| 35 | Panama | 22.3 | 2004 |
| 36 | Liberia | 21.5 | 2004 |
| 37 | Nigeria | 21.4 | 2004 |
| 38 | Guinea-Bissau | 21.2 | 2004 |
| 39 | India | 20.3 | 2004 |
| 40 | Ghana | 20.1 | 2004 |
| 41 | Korea, Dem. People's Rep. | 18.6 | 2004 |
| 42 | Mauritania | 17.6 | 2004 |
| 43 | Nepal | 16.9 | 2004 |
| 44 | Gambia, The | 16.1 | 2004 |
| 45 | Indonesia | 15.6 | 2004 |
| 46 | Kyrgyz Republic | 15.1 | 2004 |
| 47 | Jordan | 12.7 | 2004 |
| 48 | Moldova | 10.7 | 2004 |
| 49 | Ukraine | 10.6 | 2004 |
| 50 | Malaysia | 10.2 | 2004 |
Countries with Lowest Interpersonal Violence Rate
| Rank | Country | per 100K pop | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Albania | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 2 | Switzerland | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 3 | Costa Rica | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 4 | Denmark | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 5 | Estonia | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 6 | Finland | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 7 | Croatia | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 8 | Mauritius | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 9 | Slovak Republic | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 10 | Slovenia | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 11 | Uruguay | 0.0 | 2004 |
| 12 | Belgium | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 13 | Bolivia | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 14 | Botswana | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 15 | Congo, Rep. | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 16 | Cuba | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 17 | Latvia | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 18 | Papua New Guinea | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 19 | Turkmenistan | 0.1 | 2004 |
| 20 | Trinidad and Tobago | 0.1 | 2004 |
How should you read Interpersonal Violence data?
Disease-burden figures are modelled estimates, not simple death counts, and that distinction matters when you read them. They draw on vital registration, hospital records, surveys, and statistical modelling to fill gaps where direct reporting is weak, so the precision implied by a decimal point is wider than it looks, especially for countries with limited health-information systems. Rates are usually age-standardised to allow fair comparison between younger and older populations, which can move a country's apparent ranking up or down relative to a crude count. Because definitions and methods are periodically revised, two figures from different release years are not always directly comparable. Read these numbers as the best available signal of relative burden, useful for spotting patterns rather than for pinpoint accuracy.
Interpersonal Violence falls within the injuries disease category in the WHO Global Burden of Disease classification. Age-standardized death rate per 100,000, violence This 2004 ranking has 189 country observations, with values reported per 100K pop to support like-for-like comparison within that year. It includes the 149 countries with a same-year population of at least 1,000,000, so a handful of modelled deaths in a microstate cannot crown the list. The unweighted mean across all country observations is 12.3; it is a reference point, not a population-weighted global rate.
The highest recorded Interpersonal Violence rate in the 2004 comparison is in South Africa at 121.1 per 100K pop. That is 41.8x the cohort median of 2.9 per 100K pop across 149 eligible countries. At the other end of the same comparison, Albania records 0.0 per 100K pop. The spread describes differences in the published estimates; it does not by itself establish why they differ or diagnose conditions in any country. The top 50 countries above show the highest values in this dataset, while the lowest values are shown alongside where applicable to make the full range visible.
Click any country name to open its full profile on PlainCountries, which combines this disease rate with population, GDP per capita, life expectancy, healthcare spending, and dozens of other indicators. Reading disease mortality together with economic and social context is more informative than either number in isolation. All disease figures on this page are sourced from the WHO Global Health Observatory under a CC BY 4.0 licence and are identified by WHO indicator code SA_0000001455. Rates are age-standardised where WHO provides the adjusted series, which removes the effect of differences in population age structure between countries.
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory. Source: WHO indicator SA_0000001455. Rates are age-standardized where available. Rate rankings on this page use a 1,000,000+ same-year population floor.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.