This article relates to Goal 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions, one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Goal icon by the United Nations. Emberoot is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the UN.
SDG 16 progress around the world is one of the most uneven pictures in the whole Global Goals framework. A person’s risk of being murdered, asked for a bribe or held in jail without trial depends heavily on where they live. This article compares regions and a few countries, including India and the UAE, using the UN’s official data and other named sources. For the targets themselves, start with our Goal 16 overview.
Violence: a twentyfold gap
The global intentional homicide rate was 5.1 per 100,000 people in 2024, down from 5.9 in 2015, according to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026. Regional differences are huge. Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest rate at 19.3, followed by sub-Saharan Africa at 11.7. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia had the lowest at 0.9, meaning a person in the highest-rate region faced more than twenty times the risk of someone in the lowest.
Bribery: income matters
The same report found that about 17 per cent of people across 139 countries paid, or were asked for, a bribe by a public official in the past year. In high-income countries the rate was 9 per cent, against 27 per cent in low-income countries. Regional medians were 24 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa, 22.5 per cent in Central and Southern Asia and 9 per cent in Europe and Northern America.
Perception indexes tell a similar story. In Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2025, published in February 2026, the global average fell to 42 out of 100, and Western European countries took nine of the top ten places. The index measures how corrupt the public sector is perceived to be by experts and business people, not actual bribe payments, so it complements the UN survey data rather than replacing it.
India: scale, courts and identity
India scored 39 out of 100 in the CPI 2025 and ranked 91st of 182, according to Transparency International’s India page. On the legal side, India strengthened its anti-bribery law in 2018 to make giving a bribe an offence and to hold commercial organisations liable for bribes paid on their behalf.
Court backlogs are India’s best-known justice challenge. The National Judicial Data Grid publishes live pending case counts; in October 2026 its dashboard showed roughly 4.78 crore pending cases. The UN’s 2025 report also found that the share of prisoners held without sentence in Central and Southern Asia rose from 50 per cent in 2015 to 60 per cent in 2023, the kind of figure that reflects slow trials.
On legal identity, India’s Aadhaar system reported more than 145 crore enrolments on the UIDAI website in October 2026, giving most residents a way to prove who they are, with the privacy and exclusion questions that any system of that size raises.
The UAE: a high corruption perceptions score
The UAE scored 69 out of 100 in the CPI 2025 and ranked 21st of 182, according to Transparency International, well above the global average of 42. Goal 16 also covers participation and freedoms, and international assessments of those aspects differ from corruption scores, so a single index never tells the whole story for any country.
Ukraine: transparency under pressure
Ukraine is a useful case of reform in difficult conditions. Its open-source Prozorro procurement system publishes public tenders for anyone to inspect, and the Open Contracting Partnership reported savings of more than 6 billion US dollars by December 2020, with citizen monitors flagging violations in more than 33,000 tenders. The lesson travels well: publish the data, then make sure someone is organised to check it.
Latin America: fewer people held without trial
Latin America has the world’s highest homicide rate, but it has also shown progress on one justice measure. The UN’s 2025 report found the share of prisoners held without sentence there fell from 41 per cent in 2015 to 30 per cent in 2023. Over the same period, Oceania moved the other way, from 27 to 37 per cent.
What this means if you do business across borders
For a company operating in several countries, these differences shape real risks: how long a contract dispute might take, how likely an official is to ask for a payment, and how much due diligence an agent needs. Our strategy service helps founders weigh those factors when choosing markets, and the Global Goals hub has a practical integrity guide for small businesses.
Frequently asked questions
Which region has the highest homicide rate?
According to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026, Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest intentional homicide rate in 2024, at 19.3 per 100,000 people. Sub-Saharan Africa followed at 11.7. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia had the lowest rate, at 0.9 per 100,000. The global average was 5.1.
How does India score on corruption?
India scored 39 out of 100 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 and ranked 91st of 182 countries and territories. The index reflects how corrupt the public sector is perceived to be. India’s Prevention of Corruption Act, amended in 2018, makes companies liable for bribes paid on their behalf.
How does the UAE rank on corruption perceptions?
The UAE scored 69 out of 100 in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 and ranked 21st of 182 countries and territories, well above the global average score of 42. The index measures perceived public sector corruption only. Other parts of Goal 16, such as participation and civic freedoms, are measured differently and can give a different picture.