On February 29, 2024, the Institute for Economics and Peace published the annual report Global Terrorism Index 2024 (GTI). The results are, unfortunately, not surprising. Terrorism is on the rise and has become more geographically concentrated. The Sahel remains the world’s epicenter of terrorism. Burkina Faso was assessed as the country the most impacted by terrorism, followed by Israel.

Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was unprecedented in scale and historically and statistically can only be compared to 9/11 attacks on the United States.

In 2023, the lethality of terrorism grew, at the same time, the number of countries experiencing terrorist attacks, as well as the number of attacks, declined. In total, in 2023, deaths from terrorism rose by 22%. 8,352 people died in terrorist attacks (in 2022 as stated by GTI 2023: 6,701 deaths from terrorism).

The case of Sahel, especially Burkina Faso, shows how interconnected terrorism is with other types of threats (political, economic instability, ecological challenges). When the first Global Terrorism Index was published (in 2012, covering the data for 2011), Burkina Faso was placed at the end of the ranking in the group of countries with the lowest terrorism impact, assessed at 0.0. From the bottom end of the rank, Burkina Faso went up to the infamous top of GTI rank in just 14 years.

The GTI 2024 highlights the interdependence of violent conflicts, terrorism, and ecological threats but also fully-fledged links to organized crime, especially visible in the Sahel. Further, instability in the Sahel is fuelled by Russia’s support for the Wagner Group operating in the region.

Source: Institute for Economics & Peace. Global Terrorism Index 2024: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism, Sydney, February 2024. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/resources (accessed 29.02.2024).

Dr Katarzyna Maniszewska, Collegium Civitas International Relations Department, Katarzyna.Maniszewska@civitas.edu.pl, https://twitter.com/KManiszewska