Latvia records 0.38% total-population male circumcision prevalence (Morris et al. 2016), consistent with a religiously mixed Lutheran, Catholic, and Orthodox population, alongside a significant irreligious share, none of which includes circumcision as a routine practice. That low figure sits against a specific and well-documented historical devastation: Latvia's pre-war Jewish population, approximately 93,000 people concentrated particularly in Riga, lost roughly three-quarters of its total — some 70,000 people — during the Holocaust, in a destruction that involved direct, extensive participation by a Latvian collaborationist unit formed within days of the German invasion.
Latvia records 0.38% total-population male circumcision prevalence (Morris et al. 2016, PMC4772313), consistent with a religiously mixed population — Lutheran, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian, alongside a significant irreligious share — none of which includes circumcision as a routine cultural or religious practice.
This low modern figure sits against a specific and well-documented historical devastation. Latvia's pre-war Jewish population, approximately 93,000 people concentrated particularly in the capital, Riga, lost roughly three-quarters of its total — around 70,000 people — during the Holocaust between 1941 and 1944. This destruction is inseparable from the direct, extensive participation of a Latvian collaborationist unit: the Arājs Kommando, formed on 2 July 1941, within days of the German invasion, under the command of Viktors Arājs. The unit grew to approximately 300 men and is credited by historians with murdering thousands of people — independent tallies place the figure closer to 26,000 — operating alongside the Latvian Auxiliary Police and Selbstschutz. Historian Andrew Ezergailis, whose scholarship provides much of the documentary basis for understanding this period, notes an important nuance: only about a third of Arājs Kommando members actively participated in shootings, and Herberts Cukurs — a name sometimes associated directly with the killing — is now understood to have supervised guards rather than personally shot victims at the massacre described below. Neither nuance diminishes the unit's documented central role in the broader destruction.
That role is most starkly visible in the Rumbula massacre, carried out near Riga on 30 November and 8 December 1941, which killed approximately 25,000 people — roughly 24,000 Latvian Jews and 1,000 German Jews who had been deported to Latvia shortly before. The killing was carried out jointly by the Arājs Kommando and the Latvian Auxiliary Police alongside German Einsatzgruppe A, Einsatzkommando 2, and German Order Police — a collaboration between occupying and local forces that historians have documented in considerable detail.
This research did not independently verify the current size of Latvia's modern Jewish community, nor could it establish Latvia's precise legal position, if any, on non-therapeutic male circumcision — both honest, explicitly flagged gaps. Female genital mutilation is a wholly separate matter and is not conflated with male circumcision here.
Latvia has an HIV adult prevalence of approximately 0.85% (2024), notably higher than most Western and Central European countries and consistent with Latvia's historical reputation as having one of the higher HIV rates within the European Union. It is worth noting that the UNAIDS 2024 regional report for Eastern Europe and Central Asia excludes the Baltic states from its scope entirely, so this figure derives from a separate compilation. Latvia is not among the 15 WHO Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) priority countries. No Latvia-specific circumcision complication case was identified in this research.
