Venezuela registers 8 murders per day in 2021, according to NGO

Venezuela registered 3,112 homicides in 2021, an average of 8.5 per day, down 25% over the previous year, according to a report presented this Tuesday by the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), which serves as a reference in the absence of official figures.

The NGO indicated that this year they reported 11,081 violent deaths, a categorization that includes homicides, deaths due to resistance to authority and causes still under investigation.

This figure represents 40.9 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, 10% less than in 2020.

In the case of homicides, the number is 11.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the NGO.

Roberto Briceño-León, sociologist and president of the OVV, indicated that Venezuela and Honduras are the “most violent countries in Latin America.”

The specialist explained that the decrease in the figures responds in principle to the paralysis brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to the deep crisis, which adds eight years of recession and four with hyperinflation and produced a “reduction in the opportunities of the crime”.

In a population close to 30 million people, the exodus of 2.5 million young people between 15 and 29 years old, who constitute the age range “nucleus of violence” for both victims and perpetrators, also influenced the decline in the statistics.

The OVV also reported 2,332 deaths at the hands of police in 2021, in what is classified as “resistance to authority”, a category that also registered a drop compared to 2020.

The so-called “deaths under investigation”, the cause of which has not been elucidated, closed at 4,003, and suicides at 1,164. The NGO also began registering “disappeared” persons this year, which it estimated at 1,634. (I)