Sánchez, Arabeska, Leyla Diáz and Matthias Nowak. 2014 ‘Firearms Homicides.’ Firearms and Violence in Honduras; Research Notes No. 39, pp. 1-2. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. 1 March

Relevant contents

More than 42,000 people have been violently killed in Honduras over the past nine years. In 80 per cent of cases the weapon used was a firearm…(1)

Firearms Homicides

The Honduras Observatory of Violence provides data for violent deaths since 2005. Honduras experienced over 7,000 homicides in 2012, at a rate of 85.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (Sánchez, 2013). This is 8.5 times the global homicide rate and represents a cumulative increase of more than 200 per cent since 2005 (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2011; Sánchez, 2013) (see Figure 1).

Despite a levelling off, if not a slight decrease, in the homicide rate between 2011 and 2012, the rate of killings in Honduras remains extremely high compared to the rest of the world.(4)

Between 2005 and June 2013 there were 42,497 homicides in Honduras (Sánchez, 2013)…

Homicides by firearm comprise the vast majority of killings in Honduras: over the period 2005–12 an average of 80 per cent of homicides involved the use of guns, resulting in almost 32,000 people being killed by firearms (Sánchez, 2013)…

[T]here is a correlation between the number of firearms homicides and police seizures of firearms. Between 2010 and 2012 the Cortés and Francisco Morazán areas accounted for the highest numbers of firearms captured by the police (1,136 and 1,126 weapons, respectively); both areas also show the highest numbers of firearms homicides for 2008–12 (CNCN OHD, 2012, pp. 41–43) (see Map 1).

Sources:

1) Based on the compilation of total homicide and firearms homicide figures produced by the Observatory of Violence based at the National Autonomous University of Honduras's Institute for Democracy, Peace and Security. See reports at .

4) For example, the Global Burden of Armed Violence report (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2011) estimated that between 2004 and 2009 El Salvador was the most violent country in the world, with a homicide rate of 61.9 per 100,000, which was higher than Iraq for the same period.

Geneva Declaration Secretariat. 2011. The Global Burden of Armed Violence: Lethal Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sánchez, Arabeska. 2013. Causas, riesgos y protagonistas de la violencia armada en Honduras. Unpublished background paper. Geneva: Small Arms Survey.

CNCN OHD (Consejo Nacional Contra Narcotráfico Observatorio Hondureño sobre Drogas). 2012. Informe anual: el problema de las drogas y su situación en Honduras. Tegucigalpa: CNCN.

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