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Terrorism

By Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska, Hannah Ritchie, Joe Hasell, Edouard Mathieu and Max Roser

Terrorism is the threat or use of violence to intimidate or coerce in the pursuit of political or ideological goals. It is usually understood to be done by non-state actors — individuals or organizations not part of the government.

Terrorism can take many forms, including bombings, armed assaults, hijackings, or hostage-taking. Its targets can also vary and can be aimed at civilians, state actors, or public infrastructure.

Globally, terrorist attacks and deaths are rare. But this varies a lot worldwide: in some countries, they are common and on the rise, while in others, there are few attacks or none.

Terrorism is also a big concern for people across the world. Attacks are rare, but often shocking, as they are meant to scare and subdue.

This page provides data and research on how common terrorism is, how it differs across countries, and whether it is becoming more or less frequent over time.

Key Insights on Terrorism

Terrorism is a rare cause of death globally

Globally, around 20,000 people died from terrorism in 2019.

This meant it caused an estimated 1 in 2000 deaths that year.

This is shown in the chart, which lays out what people died from. You can find terrorism in the bottom right-hand corner.

Terrorism is not only a much rarer cause of death than non-communicable or infectious diseases; it is also a rare cause of violent death: more than 4 times as many people die in armed conflicts, and more than ten times as many die from homicides.1

While the number of terrorism deaths can change a lot from year to year — in 2014, almost 45,000 people died in terrorist attacks, while in 2010, it was less than 8,000 — the average over the last decade was close to the 2019 number, at around 24,000 per year.

While terrorism is a rare cause of death globally, it is more common in some countries and regions.

What you should know about this data
  • We rely on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD)2 to measure terrorism deaths.
  • The GTD defines a terrorist attack as the threat or use of violence to achieve a political, economic, religious, or social goal through intimidation or coercion by a non-state actor. Learn more in our technical article on the GTD.
  • Because the data is based on news reports, attacks, and deaths may be underreported in countries with sparser media, especially during early years.
  • Data for other causes of death comes from the Global Burden of Disease study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), published in 2019.
Tree map of causes of death globally in 2019, with non-communicable diseases in blue, communicable or infectious diseases in red, and injuries in green. The most common causes of deaths are non-communicable diseases such as heart diseases and cancers, while injuries and especially deaths from violence are rare.

Terrorism affects some countries much more than others

There are very large differences in the prevalence of terrorism across the world. Many countries experience few to no attacks and deaths. Others experience hundreds or thousands a year.

The map shows deaths from terrorism around the world. The distribution of terrorist attacks looks similar.

Most attacks happen in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Deaths are even more concentrated in some regions. In them, terrorism deaths can account for several percent of all deaths in a year.

The countries most affected by terrorism can change frequently. In 2020, almost half of the people who died from terrorism were in Afghanistan, while in 2016, Iraq was the most affected, where a third of all terrorism deaths occurred.

What you should know about this data
  • We rely on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD)2 to measure terrorism deaths.
  • The GTD defines a terrorist attack as the threat or use of violence to achieve a political, economic, religious, or social goal through intimidation or coercion by a non-state actor. Learn more in our technical article on the GTD.
  • Because the data is based on news reports, attacks, and deaths may be underreported in countries with sparser media, especially during early years.

Terrorism has increased in some parts of the world, but decreased in others

Terrorism trends have been very different across the world’s regions.

The chart shows terrorism deaths in various regions since 1970.

Importantly, because the estimates are based on news reports, attacks, and deaths may be underreported in countries with sparser media, especially during early years.

To help show the trends within regions, the axis scales between regions are not identical. But when comparing regions, you can see that terrorism deaths have been much more common in some than in others.

Global deaths from terrorism have been higher over the last decade than in the 1990s and 2000s – even when data collection had improved significantly. But they have fallen again in recent years.

This global trend is driven by increased terrorism deaths in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. However, there has been a decline in deaths in more recent years in these regions, especially in the Middle East and North Africa.

In Western Europe, deaths from terrorism have declined in recent decades. A few deadly attacks, however, have meant that deaths have varied a lot from year to year.

Deaths from terrorism in North America are typically low – but the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001 stand out. South America has seen a sustained decrease in terrorism.

The global and regional trends are broadly similar if we look at attacks instead of deaths.

What you should know about this data
  • We rely on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD)2 to measure terrorism deaths.
  • The GTD defines a terrorist attack as the threat or use of violence to achieve a political, economic, religious, or social goal through intimidation or coercion by a non-state actor. Learn more in our technical article on the GTD.
  • Because the data is based on news reports, attacks, and deaths may be underreported in countries with sparser media, especially during early years.

Most terrorist attacks target private citizens, the military, and the police

Terrorist attacks have different targets, and some are much more common than others.

The chart shows the global number of terrorist attacks by the intended target.

Most attacks target private citizens, the military and police, and other government institutions. Attacks on religious and educational institutions, non-government organizations, and journalists are rare. Attacks on tourists are very rare.

This looks similar when we examine deaths from terrorism by the intended target3: most people globally die in attacks that target private citizens or their property, the military, and the police.

What you should know about this data
  • We rely on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD)2 to measure terrorism deaths.
  • The GTD defines a terrorist attack as the threat or use of violence to achieve a political, economic, religious, or social goal through intimidation or coercion by a non-state actor. Learn more in our technical article on the GTD.
  • Because the data is based on news reports, attacks, and deaths may be underreported in countries with sparser media, especially during early years.

Many people worry about terrorism, even in countries where it is rare

In almost every country, concern about terrorist attacks is high. This is even true in countries where they are rare.

The chart shows the share of respondents in representative surveys that worried “very much” or “a great deal” about a terrorist attack.

In most countries, more than half of all people said they are worried about terrorism. In some, it was more than 80%.

When we compare the share of people worried about terrorism to how many people die from it, we see that concerns are also high in countries that rarely experience terrorism.

This means that terrorism’s reach goes much farther than the people who experience attacks themselves or have loved ones get injured or die in them.

The goal of terrorism is often to intimidate people. Surveys show that this is often successful.

What you should know about this data
  • We rely on the World Values Survey (WVS)4 to measure concerns about terrorism.
  • The WVS provides data from representative surveys taken by tens of thousands of people in countries around the world.

Research & Writing

Featured image for article on Global Terrorism Database. Stylized line chart indicating the number of terrorist attacks, deaths, and non-fatal injuries over time.

The Global Terrorism Database: how do researchers measure terrorism?

There are different approaches to measuring terrorism. Here is the approach of the Global Terrorism Database, a leading source of terrorism data.

Bastian Herre

Featured image for the article on causes of death globally. Stylized tree map with tiles of blue, red, and green.

Causes of death globally: what do people die from?

To make progress towards a healthier world we need to have a good understanding of what health problems we face today.

Max Roser

More Articles on Terrorism

Why do some terrorist attacks receive more media attention than others?

Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser

Airline hijackings were once common but are very rare today

Hannah Ritchie

Interactive Charts on Terrorism

Chart 1 of 25

Acknowledgements

We thank Cam Appel for his contributions to previous versions of this topic page.

Endnotes

  1. Armed conflicts can include terrorist attacks, but they do not necessarily seek to coerce and intimidate or targets civilians.

    Homicides differ from terrorism because they are not committed in the pursuit of political or ideological goals.

  2. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism). 2021. Global Terrorism Database (GTD) [Data set]. University of Maryland.

  3. Importantly, this includes bystanders who were not the intended target. So, an attack targeting members of the military may still kill more civilians who happened to be nearby.

  4. Inglehart, R., C. Haerpfer, A. Moreno, C. Welzel, K. Kizilova, J. Diez-Medrano, M. Lagos, P. Norris, E. Ponarin & B. Puranen (eds.). 2022. World Values Survey: All Rounds - Country-Pooled Datafile. Madrid, Spain & Vienna, Austria: JD Systems Institute & WVSA Secretariat. Dataset Version 3.0.0. doi:10.14281/18241.17

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Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:

Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska, Hannah Ritchie, Joe Hasell, Edouard Mathieu and Max Roser (2023) - “Terrorism” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism' [Online Resource]

BibTeX citation

@article{owid-terrorism,
    author = {Bastian Herre and Veronika Samborska and Hannah Ritchie and Joe Hasell and Edouard Mathieu and Max Roser},
    title = {Terrorism},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2023},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism}
}
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