The Most Dangerous Cities in the World

Known to many Americans as a tourist destination, Cancún, Mexico, is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available for Mexico, there were 376 homicides, or 45.5 murders per 100,000 residents, recorded in the town on the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula. Violence has peaked recently in Cancún. The city did not rank among the 50 most dangerous cities in the world in the years 2015 to 2017, but it ranked 13th the next year with a murder rate of 64.5 per 100,000.

Nelson Mandela Bay is one of two South African municipalities to rank among the world’s most dangerous. The area, at the southern tip of the African continent, has consistently ranked among the most dangerous places in the world since 2013, the first year the list was published. Yet, the city has never ranked as high as 24th. Its previous high was 35th out of the 50 large cities ranked by The Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice in 2014, when it recorded a rate of 34.9 homicides per 100,000 residents.

Salvador is one of four Brazilian cities to rank among the world’s 25 most dangerous in the world. It has occupied a place among the top 50 since at least 2013. The city lies on the eastern coast of Brazil. Though it has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, it has shown steady improvement since 2015, when its murder rate peaked at 60.6 homicides per 100,000 residents — ranking 14th in the world that year.

Natal lies on the northeastern tip of Brazil. In 2019, the city recorded 645 homicides among its 1.3 million residents for a homicide rate of 48.3 murders per 100,000. Its murder rate dropped by more than a third from 2018, when it was 74.7 per 100,000. This is Natal’s lowest ranking on the list in the seven years The Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice has published data on the world’s most dangerous cities. It ranked eighth in 2018.

Culiacán, Mexico, has ranked among the most dangerous cities in the world every year since at least 2013. Its most recent homicide rate of 49.4 murders per 100,000 residents represents a decline from previous years — from 60.5 per 100,000 the previous year and 70.1 per 100,000 the year before that. But the city has been far from successful in controlling its violent crime problem.

Culiacán is located in the state of Sinaloa, home of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel. In October 2019, the cartel seized control of the city to break the son of convicted Sinaloa leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman out of prison after he was arrested on drug trafficking charges. Federal authorities surrendered to cartel gunmen and released Ovidio Guzman Lopez to prevent further havoc.

Celaya is located in central Mexico, northwest of Mexico City. Unlike many of the other cities on this list, it does not have a long history of ranking among the most violent in the world. This is only the second time its homicide rate has ranked among the top 50 since 2013, the other being the previous year when its murder rate of 47.0 murders per 100,000 residents ranked 32nd in the world. Much of the increasing violence has been attributed to the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel.

Cuernavaca, Mexico, is one of just 19 cities in the world with a murder rate above 50 homicides per 100,000 residents. Eight of these cities are in Mexico. Cuernavaca had not ranked among the 50 cities with the highest homicide rates since 2014, when its homicide rate was half as high as its 2019 rate of 50.9 per 100,000 residents. Escalating battles for territory between at least five cartels operating in the Cuernavaca area are believed to be main drivers of the violence. The city’s chief of police was murdered in December 2019.

Ciudad Bolí­var is one of three Venezuelan cities to rank among the most dangerous in the world. The city, which is located just south of the Orinoco River, had 51 homicides for every 100,000 residents in 2019. This is a drop from 2018, when Ciudad Bolí­var had a homicide rate of 69.1 murders per 100,000 residents, ranking 10th in the world.

Ensenada, Mexico, has a homicide rate of 52.1 murders per 100,000 residents. This marks the first time Ensenada has ranked in the top 25 most dangerous cities in the world since the list has been published. The year before, its homicide rate of 46.6 per 100,000 ranked 34th in the world. Ensenada is located in the state of Baja California, just south of Tijuana and the U.S. border. Drug trafficking is likely related to much of the violence. Authorities have linked the city’s homicide problem to fights between criminal organizations vying for control over routes to the United States.

San Juan, in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, is one of three American cities to rank among the most dangerous in the world. Though San Juan’s homicide rate had been declining since its peak seven years ago, murders spiked there again in 2019 — marking the first time the city exceeded 50 homicides per 100,000 residents since at least 2013.

San Pedro Sula is located in the northwestern part of the Central American country of Honduras. It is the only city in Honduras to make the list. The city appears to have made impressive strides in lowering its homicide rate. San Pedro Sula had the highest homicide rate in the world in 2013 and 2014, the second highest in 2015, and third in 2016. In each of those years, the homicide rate was at least double its 2019 rate of 55.2 murders per 100,000 residents.

Feira de Santana’s homicide rate ranks 14th highest in the world for the second consecutive year. The Brazilian city’s homicide rate has been higher than 55 murders per 100,000 residents each year since 2016. Located near the country’s eastern edge, Feira de Santana is approximately 60 miles away from Salvador, another Brazilian city on this list.

Kingston is Jamaica’s capital and largest city. Its homicide rate has been steadily increasing in recent years, from 40.6 murders per 100,000 residents 2014 to 57.6 per 100,000 in 2019. The country has struggled with gun violence, with many of the weapons coming from the U.S. The New York Times reported that less than a third of murders around the world are committed with firearms, but in Jamaica that figure is higher than 80%.

Located in the northeast region of Venezuela, Guayana is one of several cities in South America to rank among the most dangerous in the world. In 2019, there were 57.8 homicides reported per 100,000 residents, more than in all but 11 cities worldwide with available data.

While Guayana ranks as one of the most dangerous cities, homicides have gone down in recent years. In 2018, Guayana recorded 82.8 homicides per 100,000 residents. In 2017, there were 80.3 homicides per 100,000 residents.

Baltimore is one of three U.S. cities to rank among the most dangerous in the world. The city’s murder rate of 58.6 homicides per 100,000 residents is more than 11 times higher than the official U.S. murder rate.

Baltimore has ranked among the 50 most dangerous cities in the world since at least 2013, though its homicide rate has steadily increased during that time — up from 37.8 murders per 100,000 residents in 2013, the first year this report was published.

Located approximately 120 miles inland from the eastern coast of Brazil, Vitória da Conquista is one of several cities in South America to rank among the most dangerous in the world. In 2019, there were 205 homicides reported in Vitória da Conquista, the 10th most of any city when adjusted for population. The current homicide rate is a sharp increase from 2015, when 132 homicides, about 42 for every 100,000 people, were reported in the city.

St. Louis has the highest murder rate of any city in the U.S. and ranks among the 10 highest in the world. The Missouri city recorded nearly 200 murders in 2019, accounting for a homicide rate of 64.5 incidents per 100,000 people. The murder rate in St. Louis has nearly doubled since 2013, when the homicide rate was 34.1 per 100,000. St. Louis has had the highest murder rate of any American city every year since 2014.

There were 3,065 murders reported in Cape Town in 2019 — more than eight homicides a day on average. Adjusted to the city’s population, there were 68.3 homicides per 100,000 Cape Town residents, the most of any city in Africa and the eighth most of any city worldwide. The 2019 homicide rate marks a significant increase from 2016, when there were 60.8 homicides reported per 100,000 residents.

In an effort to suppress the violence, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered in July 2019 troops from the South African Army to patrol the more dangerous parts of Cape Town. The military deployment was widely seen as a stop gap measure at best. While murders were down in the first weekend of deployment, there was a spike of 46 murders reported the following weekend.

A popular resort town and tourist destination on Mexico’s Pacific coast, Acapulco is also one of the most dangerous cities in the world. In 2019, there were 71.6 homicides reported per 100,000 residents, the sixth highest homicide rate of any city in Mexico and the seventh highest of any large city worldwide.

The current homicide rate is down slightly after a multi-year spike in crime that peaked in 2018 at 113.2 murders per 100,000 Acapulco residents. Several causes may have contributed to the spike in crime, including the increased demand for opioids in the United States and the turf war that resulted from the 2016 arrest of drug lord El Chapo.

No city outside of Mexico has a higher homicide rate than Caracas, Venezuela’s capital city. The city of nearly 2.9 million reported 2,134 murders — the third highest total of any city on this list.

The murder rate of 74.6 homicides per 100,000 residents in Caracas is lower than previous years. The homicide rate was at least 110 per 100,000 in the years from 2013 to 2017, before dropping to 100 per 100,000 in 2018. This is the first time since at least 2013 that Caracas has not ranked among the top three most dangerous cities in the world.

Ciudad Obregón is one of just five cities in the world with a homicide rate of over 80 murders per 100,000 residents — all are in Mexico. The city, located in the state of Sonora near the Gulf of California, has steadily moved up the rankings of the most dangerous cities. It ranked 50th in 2015 before moving to 41st, 31st, and 20th in the subsequent years.

Irapuato is a town in central Mexico with approximately 896,000 area residents. According to data from The Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, there are 80.7 homicides per 100,000 residents in Irapuato, the fourth most of any city worldwide.

In one horrific example of crime in Irapuato, on July 2, 2020, armed assailants attacked a drug rehabilitation center in the city, killing 26 men and injuring five others. Authorities contend that the massacre may be part of a turf war among rival area gangs.

Uruapan is the third most dangerous city in the world, with 85.6 homicides per 100,000 residents. This is the result of a relatively recent serious spike in homicides in the city. From 2013 to 2017, the city was not among the world’s 50 most dangerous cities, but then ranked 18th in 2018 before advancing to third place in the 2019 report. Authorities believe this increase is largely due to a cartel war for territory in Uruapan’s state of Michoacan.

Juárez is one of just two cities in the world with a murder rate of over 100 homicides per 100,000 residents, or over 1,500 murders in 2019. The city, just across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, has attracted many people from other parts of the country looking for jobs in the bordertown’s manufacturing plants. But the city has also garnered international attention especially for its violence against women. Women seem to comprise an outsized share of homicide victims, and they are often killed simply because of their gender.

For the second consecutive year, Tijuana is by far the most dangerous city in the world. Its homicide rate of 134.2 murder per 100,000 residents is more than 28% higher than the next closest city. Tijuana, located south of San Diego in Mexico’s northwest corner, has had a murder rate over 100 homicides per 100,000 people since 2017. Like many other Mexican cities on this list, Tijuana has been plagued by brutal violence by drug cartels fighting for control over territory and trade routes to the U.S.