InSight Crime 47 Registered Murders In 2022 In Suriname Compared To 32 In 2021 Dagblad Suriname

The website InSight Crime reports that in 2022 Suriname recorded 47 murders between January and mid-December 2022, which corresponds to a preliminary murder rate of 7 7 per 100,000 inhabitants (612,985 inhabitants).

This is a significant increase from the 32 recorded murders in 2021, but lower than the 54 recorded murders in 2020 It is unclear why the number of murders increased as much as in 2022, but the increase may be partly due to the role of Suriname as a transit country for cocaine.

President Chandrikapersad Santokhi told InSight Crime in October 2022 that the drug trade has seriously affected violent crime in Suriname A number of experts interviewed by InSight Crime during fieldwork in Suriname also identified the cocaine trade as the biggest threat to Suriname's national security.

Some of the most violent events in recent years have been related to organized crime, particularly the cocaine trade However, compared to its neighboring countries, especially in the Caribbean, Suriname has a low murder rate.

One of the factors that may explain the difference between Suriname and countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia and Guyana is that Suriname has no sophisticated urban gangs.

Guyana According to local media, the Guyana police recorded 122 homicides until mid-December 2022, which is 15 1 per 100,000 inhabitants (population 804,567).

This represented only a small drop from 2021, but still gave the country its lowest homicide rate in a decade Nevertheless, illegal firearms continue to enter the country from the United States and Brazil, fueling violence in the country.

Guyana also faces the proliferation of illegal mining as the rise of Venezuelan gangs threatens to increase violence around this criminal economy High homicide rates in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean continued to experience high homicide rates in 2022, as cocaine production reached new heights, gang fragmentation continued and the flow of guns through the region became more acute became.

For Ecuador, for example, the situation was nothing short of catastrophic Historic amounts of cocaine entering the country fueled violence, with homicides skyrocketing as gangs targeted court officials and killed police officers at a record rate.

Most of that cocaine came from Colombia, where recently inaugurated President Gustavo Petro has pledged to move away from the war on drugs and commit to efforts to achieve "total peace" with the country's rebel and criminal groups However, so far the level of violence has remained stable.

In El Salvador, a resolute crackdown on gangs has dramatically reduced homicides, albeit at the cost of alleged systematic human rights violations And in Haiti, an almost total lack of political capacity fueled violence, while gangs paralyzed the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince.

The Caribbean became the region's murder hotspot Brazil: 18.

8 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (214,326,223 inhabitants) In the first nine months of 2022, Brazil saw a slight 3% decrease in homicides from 2021, with 30,187 murders recorded, according to media group Globo's National Homicide Index At this rate, the country looks set to reach just above 40,000 homicides in 2022, a slight overall decrease from the 41,069 recorded in 2021 according to the same index.

In northeastern Brazil, which has long been an epicenter for gang violence due to gangs trying to control drug trafficking routes to Europe, homicides fell by 5% Bahia, the largest state in the region, led the ranking, but also saw an overall drop of 11%, perhaps due to renewed investment in public safety there.

Amapá, a small northern state, saw a 34% drop in homicides, likely reflecting a natural drop in violence after a particularly bloody 2021, when major gangs including the Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC battled for control of drug and human trafficking Rondônia, a state bordering Bolivia, saw a 29% increase in homicides, the highest nationwide.

Rondônia has been a battleground for the PCC's protracted war with their Rio rivals, the Comando Vermelho-CV, for control of the hyper-lucrative Bolivia-Brazil cocaine route While drug trafficking gangs may have caused much of the violence, Brazil's notoriously trigger-happy police have also contributed.

While police-caused deaths fell in the first half of 2022, thousands of Brazilians continue to be killed by security forces By 2021, 84% of these police kills will target black people.

For an overview and figures of all Latin American and Caribbean countries, go to the insight crime website .