Global Deaths Fell and Far-right Attacks Increased, among Findings from Annual Terrorism Report

The Institute for Economics and Peace recently released the Global Terrorism Index 2020, the eighth version of an annual report that seeks to measure the impact of terrorism around the world. The report presents some positive findings, including that deaths from terrorism fell for the fifth consecutive year, with a 15 percent decrease from the prior year. However, some troubling trends have emerged or at least continued. According to the report, one of the most worrying trends in the last five years is the surge in far-right political terrorism, with North America, Western Europe, and Oceania experiencing a 250 percent increase in these attacks since 2014. The report adds that North America had the largest regional percentage increase in economic impact from overall terrorism, rising by nearly 45 percent from the previous year, which was due largely to an increase in far-right terrorism. The report also includes a special section on COVID-19 and terrorism, which observes that the pandemic is expected to worsen the impact of terrorism in certain regions and present complex challenges for counterterrorism responses. The information that is presented and analyzed in this report comes from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism’s (START’s) Global Terrorism Database. START is led by the University of Maryland and is a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence.