The homicide rate among youth in Latin America is double or triple the rate in all other parts of the world except Africa, according to the World Health Organization. “It’s a huge problem in Central America,” Richard Jones of Catholic Relief Services said. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which suffer gang violence, are seeing an increasing impact from drug trafficking. In El Salvador the homicide level in the age group 15 to 20 is 90 per 100,000 young people—nearly five times the rate that W.H.O. considers an “epidemic.” In Brazil the youth homicide rate rose from 41.7 per 100,000 in 1996 to 52.9 in 2008. Homicide rates in Latin America could be affected by the broad availability of guns, but efforts to calculate the impact of such factors as guns and drug trafficking are stymied by a lack of data.
Homicides Menace Latin American Youth
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
“Let diplomacy silence the guns!” Pope Leo XIV told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square a few hours after the United States entered the Iran-Israel war by bombing three of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pope Leo XIV’s statement was read at the premiere of a play about the Peruvian investigative journalist Paola Ugaz, who was subject to death threats because of her reporting on sexual abuse.
About a dozen religious leaders from the San Diego area, including Bishop Michael Pham, visited federal immigration court on Friday “to provide some sense of presence.”
In a time of increasing disaffiliation from and disillusionment with the institutional church, a new theological perspective on the church is needed—one that places Jesus’ own teaching at the center.