Global Terrorism Index: Georgia ranks 77th among 163 countries

Georgia has ranked 77th among 163 countries in the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), a report published annually by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

The GTI is a comprehensive study analysing the impact of terrorism for 163 countries and which covers 99.7 per cent of the world’s population.

The index provides a comprehensive summary of key global trends and patterns in terrorism since 2000. It produces a composite score in order to provide an ordinal ranking of countries on the impact of terrorism.

The lower the country scores on the list, the less it is affected by terrorism.

The index combines a number of factors associated with terrorist attacks to build an explicit picture of the impact of terrorism, illustrating trends, and providing a data series for analysis by researchers and policymakers.

The 2017 GTI report highlights a turning point in the fight against radical Islamist extremism. The main positive finding shows a global decline in the number of deaths from terrorist attacks to 25,673 people, which is a 22 per cent improvement from the peak in 2014. Terrorism has fallen significantly in the epicentres of Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, which are four of the five countries most affected by terrorism,” read the report.

As for Georgia, it took 77th place among 163 countries with a score of 2.114 out of 10. Last year Georgia took 87th place and the change in score in 2016 and 2017 is -0.857.

Russia and Ukraine have dominated the region in terms of both the number of terrorist attacks and fatalities over the last 15 years. The rest of the region accounted for only four percent of attacks and seven percent of fatalities. Between 2002 and 2016, the region experienced a total of 2,348 terrorist attacks and 3,777 fatalities. Every country in the region has suffered at least one terrorist attack since 2002, and every country, bar Turkmenistan, has suffered fatalities as a consequence,” read the report.

Russia’s most lethal period of terrorism occurred between 2002 and 2004 although it was also considerably impacted between 2010 and 2011. Georgia had the third highest number of attacks and fatalities with 38 deaths from 97 attacks,” the report said.

Russia and Eurasia GTI score, rank and change in score from 2002-2016. A reduced score indicates lessening terrorism. 

The top three countries in the index were Iraq (10), Afghanistan (9.441) and Nigeria (9.009), making these countries the most affected by terrorism on earth.