The Global Terrorism Index (GTI), issued annually by the Australia based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) aims to comprehensively analyze the impact of terrorism on 163 countries, covering 99.7% of the world population. Defining terrorism as ‘the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation,’ the GTI accounts for terrorist attacks over five prior years. Using four parameters to calculate each country’s annual score, namely total number of terrorist incidents, fatalities and injuries caused by terrorists, and total property damage from terrorist incidents in a given year, the GTI report is based primarily on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, apart from other sources.
The link for 2019 GTI Report is given for your reference. Anybody can download this report. Still, countries like India feel that the data collection procedure of this report is not robust due to various factors. India also raised its meaningful objection ‘as Decoding the Global Terrorism Index” in the following manner:
“The Australian Government’s Charities and Not-for-profits Commission does not reveal any data about IEP’s funding sources. Emailed queries sent to the IEP requesting a list of its donors have also remained unanswered. The IEP’s 2019 annual report shows that the organization has only 12 full time staff, 12 full-time equivalent staff and 6 volunteers. It is indeed surprising that an organization is able to annually collect, meaningfully analyse and disseminate data about 163 countries in the Global Terrorism and Peace Indices and provide country wise national peace reports with just 24 staff members and 6 volunteers. Similarly, the list of experts consulted by the IEP for preparing the GTI report do not list a single expert with experience in tackling field and policy level security challenges in South Asia.”
We hope, the Australia-based organization should take this criticism from the world’s largest democracy with positive spirit and disclose the details sought by the Government of India. The GTI report should reflect the actual ground. Otherwise, it will be touted as one more customary academic exercise.
By
INSTANEWSGRAM
Source : Niti Aayog Website (Formerly Planning Commission of India), Government of India