Violence in Colombia saw a 14.2 percent rise in 2008, despite a 6.8 percent drop of the country's murder rate, the director of the national forensics institute Pedro Franco said Tuesday.
Sixty percent of the recorded cases of violence "unfortunately were associated with the consumption of alcohol or drugs," Franco told Caracol Radio.
"We see some encouragement in the tendency that the total of murders is decreasing, a change that is beginning to be significant, but the number of non-fatal injuries worryingly increased 14.2 percent," the forensics expert said.
In total 15,215 people were murdered in Colombia in 2008. The year before 16,318 had their lives taken by violence.
According to Franco, the government campaigns against violence apparently haven't had the success they were intended to have and that the "phenomenon of intolerance persists and sustains without much of an outlook on a solution".
