International | The odds of being murdered

Dicing with death

The UN offers some hints on how to avoid being bumped off

CONGRATULATIONS: if you are reading this then you are not one of the 437,000 people whose lives ended as statistics in a grisly report on murder published on April 10th by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The unfortunate half-million were all those around the world who were slain in 2012. The average person thus had roughly a one in 16,000 chance of being bumped off that year. But as the UN’s figures make clear, there is no such thing as an average person. How can you shorten your odds of making it through 2014?

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Dicing with death”

A history of finance in five crises

From the April 12th 2014 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

The world is losing the fight against international gangs

Globalisation and technological progress are leading to a boom in organised crime

COP29 UNFCCC Climate Conference In Baku

Half a loaf, at best, from the climate talks

This year’s negotiations made very modest progress


Is your master’s degree useless?

New data show a shockingly high proportion of courses are a waste of money


The perils of appeasing a warlike Russia

Finland’s cold-war past offers urgent lessons for Ukraine’s future

The danger zone between two presidents

The world’s bad actors will relish any power vacuum

How to avoid Oval Office humiliation

A dozen officials offer tips on the dangerous art of Trump-flattery