COMPREHENSIVE NEW STUDY CHALLENGING EXPERT CONSENSUS FINDS INCIDENCE OF TERRORISM DECLINING AROUND THE WORLD

Terrorism Fatalities Decline as Muslim Support for al-Qaeda Terror Network Plummets Number of Wars and Death Tolls in Africa Down Dramatically Since 1999

NEW YORK, May 21, 2008—Challenging the expert consensus that the threat of global terrorism is increasing, a new report from the Canadian research team that produced the much-cited Human Security Report in 2005, reveals a sharp net decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world.

The Human Security Brief 2007 demonstrates that:

Fatalities from terrorism have declined by some 40 percent, while the loose-knit terror network associated with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has suffered a dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world.

There has been an extraordinary, but largely unnoticed, positive change in sub-Saharan Africa’s security landscape. The number of conflicts being waged in the region more than halved between 1999 and 2006; the combat toll dropped by 98 percent.

The decline in the total number of armed conflicts and combat deaths around the world that was reported three years ago in Human Security Report 2005 has continued.

The Brief was produced by the Human Security Report Project (HSRP) research team at Simon Fraser University’s School for International Studies in Vancouver, Canada. The HSRP’s research is supported by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland and the UK.

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