GTI 2023 by IEP: Afghanistan Most Impacted by Terrorism for Fourth Straight Year, India Ranks 13th

According to the Global Terrorism Index 2023, the 10th edition of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), Afghanistan remained the nation most affected by terrorism for the fourth consecutive year, despite assaults and fatalities declining by 75% and 58%, respectively.

• IEP is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank whose mission is to refocus the world’s attention on peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress.
• It is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

India’s Position

i.India was ranked 13th and was listed among nations with a “high” impact of terrorism.

ii.No respondents chose war or terrorism as the biggest threat to their daily safety, placing India among the 25 worst terror-hit countries and among 56 of the 120 countries surveyed.

iii.According to the report, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI-M] is ranked as the 12th deadliest terrorist organisation in 2022.

Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2023

i.GTI 2023, the 10th edition of the GTI, provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism over the past 10 years.

ii.The GTI score is calculated by weighing incidents, hostage situations, and terrorist-related deaths during a five-year period.

• Data from TerrorismTracker and other sources are used in the GTI report created by the IEP.
• TerrorismTracker provides event records on terrorist attacks since January 1, 2007.
• The dataset contains almost 66,000 terrorist incidents from 2007 to 2022.

GTI 2023: Top 5 countries with the highest impact of terrorism:

Note – The GTI 2023 is based on data from Dragonfly’s TerrorismTracker database and uses 31 December, 2022 as the cut-off date.

Key Points:

i.Despite a decline of 866 deaths due to terrorism in 2022, Afghanistan recorded 633 fatalities.

ii.Globally, terrorism-related fatalities dropped by 9% to 6,701 deaths, representing a 38% decline from its high point in 2015.

• The fall in deaths was mirrored by a reduction in the number of incidents, and however, the number of terrorist deaths would have increased by 4% if Afghanistan had not been included in the index.

iii.South Asia is revealed to be the region with the weakest average GTI score.

• When compared to 2021, South Asia reported 1,354 deaths from terrorism in 2022, a decrease of 30%.
• If the improvement in Afghanistan was excluded, then terrorism deaths would have increased by 71%.

iv.Afghanistan and Pakistan were among the ten nations most affected by terrorism.

• Pakistan witnessed a considerable increase in terrorism-related fatalities in 2022, with 643 deaths, up 120% from 292 in 2021.

v.The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is now the world’s fastest-growing terrorist organisation and is accountable for one-third of these fatalities in Pakistan, with a nine-fold surge since 2021.

GTI 2023: Top 5 Deadliest Terrorist Groups in The World in 2022

vi.IS continued to be the deadliest terror group globally for the 8th consecutive year, which reported the most attacks and deaths of any group in 2022.

vii.Despite this, the number of people killed in terrorist attacks that were linked to IS and its affiliate organizations, Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISK), Islamic State – Sinai Province (ISS) and Islamic State West Africa (ISWA), decreased by 16%.

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