This is a country where a footballer was shot dead for scoring an own-goal.
World crime statisticians use two parameters: number of murders and murder rate. There was only one constant in both the lists: Colombia, rightly dubbed Locombia (Crazy Colombia).
Though the drug cartel and civil war-ravaged country has the highest murder rate in the world, there has been good news.
Murder rates have been falling and the government has had some success with tackling urban crime. A look at some of the things that Colombia did right and which other countries can look up to.
It increased the police force by almost 20 per cent. This force in turn increased its network of informants manifold. The initial success spurred the people on to cooperate better with the law enforcement officials who they slowly began to trust.
The Colombians did it so well that El Salvador and Rio are following them step-by-step.
Though it is a long way from becoming a paradise, a single piece of statistic shows that the Colombians are on the right track.
In 1993, the city of Bogota witnessed 4,500 murders, at a rate of 80/100000.
In 2006, the murders were down to just over a thousand, indicating a 75 per cent drop in murder rate.
Image: A girl stands next to guns, which were confiscated by the Colombian police during an operation in Medellin, Colombia.
Photograph: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images
Also see: Benazir Bhutto Assassinated
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