The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2024 has been released. It is a comprehensive study that analyzes the impact of terrorism on 163 countries. It covers 99.7 percent of the world's population.

The GTI rankings are based on complex calculations using criteria such as terrorist incidents, fatalities, serious consequences, hostages, counterterrorism, effectiveness of terrorism investigations, and many others.

The GTI, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) using data fr om the Terrorism Tracker and other sources, produces a composite score to provide an ordinal ranking of countries by their impact of terrorism, rating each country on a scale of 0 to 10; wh ere 0 represents no impact of terrorism and 10 represents the highest measurable impact of terrorism.

The top positions among countries with the highest terrorist activity and terrorist threat were occupied by Burkina Faso (8.571), Israel (8.143), Mali (7.998), Pakistan (7.916), Syria (7.89), Afghanistan (7.825).

Iran (4.464) ranks 26th, Turkey (4.168) – 29, the United States (4.141) – 30, Russia (3.016) – 35, France (2.647) – 38, Norway (1.747) – 53, Armenia (0.423) – 76, the United Arab Emirates (0.233) – 79, Lithuania (0.059) – 87.

In the 13 years that the GTI has been in place, this is the first time that a country other than Afghanistan or Iraq has taken the top spot in the ranking. Burkina Faso has seen nearly 2,000 deaths as a result of 258 terrorist attacks, accounting for nearly a quarter of all terrorist deaths worldwide. Terrorism has increased each year in Burkina Faso since 2014, with it also being on the rise in the neighbouring Mali and Niger. In Burkina Faso, terrorism-related deaths increased by 68 per cent in 2023, even as attacks decreased by 17 per cent.

The most notable improvements in counterterrorism have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq, for the first time, is not among the worst 10 countries in the index, with fewer than 100 terrorism-related deaths recorded in 2023. Total deaths have fallen by 99 per cent since the 2007 peak, and incidents by 90 per cent. Afghanistan has also seen a significant reduction in the impact of terrorism, with deaths and incidents down 84 per cent and 75 per cent respectively since 2007.