Are Disappearances Murder?

A fellow political scientist's blog post got me thinking about a subject I hadn't considered before, at least not in this context. The post discusses the alarming rate of disappearances in El Salvador and whether or not these disappearances should be considered gang violence, as the article by Hannah Stone that he cites suggests. The author of the blog rightly points out that it is difficult to determine what should be considered gang violence, not just as this applies to disappearances but to murders and other types of violence as well. It brings up the important question of not only how homicide statistics are gathered, but what definition of homicide is used (and what deaths are left off the list). Homicides are often used as indicators of the crime rate because, presumably, homicides do not often go unreported. Which, I think, is kind of a moot point when looking at disappearance rates or thinking of hidden graves. In some countries, criminal suspects killed by the police are not included in homicide reports even though many human rights defenders would argue that those killed are victims of murder. Some statistics include deaths due to car crashes as homicide, while others don't. It makes homicide statistics that much more murky. It also makes me curious as to what the disappearance rate is in Guatemala or Honduras, or, for that matter, Brazil or Argentina.