ABSTRACT
Violence perpetrated by young people is one of the most visible manifestations of violence in a global context of generally rising levels of violence. Youth homicide rates have been increasing steadily throughout the developing world since the beginning of the 1980s, to such an extent that in contemporary Latin America, for example, homicide now constitutes the leading cause of death among 10–29 year-olds. Just as for violence in general, the developmental consequences of youth violence are varied. They include causing death and injury, infrastructural destruction, reducing economic productivity, and undermining the social fabric, among others. In many ways, though, the developmental consequences of youth violence are arguably magnified because they involve youth. Over 1.5 billion of the 1.8 billion young people projected to be in the world in 2010 will live in developing countries, where it is estimated that they will constitute 30 percent of the population. Youth therefore represent a large proportion of the potential human capital and social capital of developing societies, and youth violence poses a severe threat not only to generational development, but for the progress of developing societies as a whole.
