By Dennis Rodgers, Robert Muggah, and Chris Stevenson

Violence is on the upswing in Central America, with the region currently exhibiting some of the highest rates of reported criminal violence in Latin America and indeed the world (Moser and McIlwaine, 2004). The recent Global Burden of Armed Violence report estimates the annual global homicide rate to be around 7.6 per 100,000, yet in the Americas the figure exceeds 20 per 100,000, and in Central America it is almost 30 per 100,000 (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2008). Not surprisingly, perhaps, homicide is described as one of the primary regional public health issues (WHO, 2008a; Briceño-León, 2005, p. 1629). Many factors have shaped this particular panorama of violence, which is both heterogeneous and dynamic. The World Bank, for example, attributes the rise in Central American violence to ‘a complex set of factors, including rapid urbanization, persistent poverty and inequality, social exclusion, political violence, organized crime, post-conflict cultures, the emergence of illegal drug use and trafficking and authoritarian family structures’ (World Bank, 2008a, p. 3).S

Geneva: Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, 2009. 44p.