Every year the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, a Mexican non-governmental organisation, publishes what has become the most widely cited ranking of the world’s most dangerous cities. It ranks them by intentional killings per 100,000 residents, covering cities above 300,000 people and excluding active war zones. The latest edition makes for uncomfortable reading.
Two things stand out. Mexico still supplies more entries than any other country, and Ecuador, which barely registered on this list a decade ago, now places four cities inside the global top ten. We are counting down from number 15 to the single most dangerous city on earth, with the rate that put each one there.
A note on what these numbers do and do not mean. A city-wide rate rarely translates into equal risk across every neighbourhood, and in several of these places the danger is concentrated in areas visitors never see. The figures measure risk to residents, not to tourists.
#15. Caucaia, Brazil: 65.58 per 100,000
Caucaia is part of the metropolitan area of Fortaleza in Ceara state, and it illustrates a pattern that repeats across Brazil: the violence is highest not in the famous coastal city itself but in the satellite municipalities around it.
Ceara has been contested between two national factions and one strong local group, and the resulting fragmentation produced some of the sharpest increases in the country. Caucaia contains both dense low-income neighbourhoods and long stretches of undeveloped coast, giving armed groups room to operate.
The municipality also contains the Cumbuco beach area, a well-known kitesurfing destination that attracts European visitors through the windy season, operating in near-total separation from the conditions a few kilometres inland.