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
In Los Angeles, people stay for the movie credits. After the awful images of these fires are gone, they will stay to rebuild their city, too.
Catholic Charities USA is now accepting donations to its Los Angeles Wildfire Relief initiative, and the L.A. archdiocese has created a dedicated relief fund.
Warning of “the increasingly concrete threat of a world war,” Pope Francis called for “the diplomacy of hope” in his address to the ambassadors of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Sister Simona Brambilla, an Italian Consolata missionary, as prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.