Released in March 2026, the Institute for Economics & Peace's Global Terrorism Index contains one of the sharpest divergences you'll find in any global security dataset this year: terrorism deaths fell 28% globally, reaching their lowest level since 2007 — while, in the same report, Western fatalities rose 280%.
The global trend: genuinely improving
A 28% decline in global terrorism deaths, landing at a post-2007 low, represents real, measurable progress on the metric that matters most in absolute terms. For most of the world, 2026's data tells a story of continued improvement.
The regional exception: the West, sharply
That global improvement doesn't hold for Western countries, where fatalities from terrorism rose nearly fourfold. The index attributes the overwhelming majority of this — 93% of fatal Western attacks — to lone-wolf perpetrators, rather than organised or networked terrorist cells.
A first for the rankings
Pakistan is now the most-affected country in the index for the first time, reflecting a shift in where the bulk of global terrorism activity and casualties are concentrated — away from some of the countries that have historically topped the list.
The trend within the trend
The report also flags that youth radicalisation investigations have tripled since 2021 in Western countries — a leading indicator that sits alongside, and likely helps explain, the lone-wolf attack surge, since radicalisation pathways (often online) are the precursor security services are tracking before an attack occurs, not after.
What this means for security and business planning
For law enforcement and policy audiences, the lone-wolf and radicalisation data points are the operationally useful ones — they point toward online radicalisation prevention and early-intervention programs as the higher-leverage response, rather than the traditional counter-terrorism apparatus built around organised cells. For international businesses, the country-level shift (Pakistan now topping the list) is a relevant data point for security risk assessments tied to regional operations.
Source: Vision of Humanity