Jamaica ranks among countries with high violent deaths

GENEVA, Switzerland (CMC):

Jamaica is the only Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country named in The Global Burden of Armed Violence report that covers violent deaths across both conflict and non-conflict environments.

"The Global Burden of Armed Violence 2011 provides policymakers and other stakeholders with a timely tool for responding to evidence in designing policies and programmes at the local, national, and regional levels," said Peter Maurer, state secretary of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

The Global Burden of Armed Violence: Lethal Encounters is a product of the Geneva Declaration Secretariat.

The Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, endorsed by more than 100 countries, calls upon states to achieve measurable reductions in the global burden of armed violence and tangible improvements in human security by 2015.

The Global Burden of Armed Violence 2011 reveals that El Salvador was the country most affected by lethal violence in 2004‹09, followed by Iraq and Jamaica.

It said that Central and Southern Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, and South America are the regions that exhibit the highest levels of lethal violence.

economically motivated violence

"The boundaries between political, criminal, and interpersonal violence have become increasingly blurred, as revealed in cases of killings associated with drug trafficking in Central America or of pirates engaging in economically motivated violence in Somalia," said Keith Krause, one of the editors and authors of the report.

"This research presets a wider view encompassing deaths from armed violence in all contexts, including crime and gang-related violence, including conflict, and including gender-related violence," he said.

The report, released late last month, provides a unique integrated approach to understanding the global impact of lethal violence.