Far-right terrorism growing in the West, 2020 Terrorism Index

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - Global deaths from terrorism have fallen for a fifth consecutive year, according to the 2020 Global Terrorism Index, but in the past decade a new threat has been emerging, with far-right attacks increasing significantly in many regions.

The report, which was compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) and released on Wednesday, summarises global trends in terrorism and ranks countries in order of those most affected in terms of both casualties and economic costs in 2019.

Steve Killelea, executive chairman of IEP, said the latest report revealed some surprising but positive news, including a 15 per cent drop in terrorism globally last year and a 59 per cent decrease since 2014.

This was partly due to the collapse of Islamic State territories and the subsequent de-escalation of conflict in the Middle East.

"More countries have improved this year than [in any other year] since the inception of the index — 103 countries improved compared to only 35 which deteriorated," Mr Killelea told the ABC.

"That's really good news."

"But still, we understand about 13,800 people died in terrorist attacks in 2019 so, although it seems to be declining at the moment, it's still a serious issue."

The global economic impact of terrorism also fell by 25 per cent in 2019 to $US16.4 billion ($22.28 billion).

Australia ranked 74 out of 163 nations listed in order of those most affected by terrorism.

Mr Killelea said only two terrorist attacks were recorded in Australia in 2019, including an attack on a dairy farm by animal liberationists.

"Neither of those attacks resulted in any injury, so if you look at it from an Australian perspective, compared to globally, we're not in too bad a position."

The highest-ranked countries were Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

Since the inception of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) in 2012, the top 10 countries have always been developing nations and almost always nations suffering internal conflicts.

"Less than 1 per cent of all deaths through terrorism happen in advanced Western economies," Mr Killelea said.

Thomas Morgan, senior research fellow at IEP, said there was often a "misconception" that terrorism predominantly occurred in Western nations.

"There is a misconception based in the coverage levels in the media … but also because 96 per cent of terrorism occurred in the context of an ongoing conflict," he said.

He said because they happened in the context of war, they received less attention than attacks elsewhere.

Mr Morgan feared the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic could have an impact on both the level and the types of terrorism that would happen in the coming years.

"Between 2011 and 2019, riots and violent demonstrations in the West increased by 277 per cent," he said.

"There are serious concerns that the deteriorating economic conditions will lead to more people becoming alienated and susceptible to extremist propaganda."

Far-right attacks up by 250 per cent over five years

Of all Western nations, the United States ranked the highest at number 29, with 53 attacks and 39 deaths last year.

But those figures revealed a new trend developing in terrorism. Of those deaths, 34 were attributed to far-right extremists.

Mr Killelea said far-right groups including neo-Nazis, ultra-nationalists and white supremacists were responsible for a total of 89 deaths in 2019.

"Admittedly it's only low numbers, but we have a 250 per cent increase in attacks by the far-right in the last five years," he said.

But 51 of those deaths occurred in a single incident when a gunman opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The report said over the past 50 years, there had been 13 far-right terrorist attacks that had each killed more than 10 people, compared to 24 Islamist attacks, and three linked to other ideologies.

But as attacks by Islamic State (IS) continue to decline, the balance is slowing shifting.

Mr Killelea said while the rise of the jihadist was a new phenomenon that peaked in 2014 and had since been declining, in the days of the Cold War "terrorism was related around left and right terrorism groups".

Keeping the downward curve

Mr Killelea said the main factors that had contributed to the decrease in terrorism were the territorial defeat of IS and the easing of conflicts within Syria and Iraq.

In fact, the Middle East region recorded its lowest number of deaths since 2003.

But IS is far from gone. The group and its affiliates still claimed responsibility for attacks in 27 countries last year.

"They are a long way from a spent force," Mr Killelea said, adding a shift in IS's "centre of gravity" into sub-Saharan Africa caused a spike in terrorism deaths in seven nations.

However, it was the Taliban that remained the world's deadliest terrorist group, according to the report.

Mr Killelea said because 96 per cent of all deaths from terrorism occur in war zones, "we need to reduce the number of conflicts around the globe" if we want to maintain this downwards trend.

Elsewhere, he said "reducing the influence" of terrorist organisations was the key.

"To break these influences, three major initiatives are needed — to break their media coverage and online social networks, disrupt their funding and lessen the number of sympathisers," he said.

"These three things play off each other, so any effective government policy would need to address all three."

Global Terrorism Index

2020 Key Findings

- Deaths from terrorism fell for the fifth consecutive year in
2019 to 13,826 deaths, representing a 15 per cent decrease
from the prior year.

- The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Russia and
Eurasia, South America and South Asia regions all recorded
falls in deaths from terrorism of at least 20 per cent.

- Although terrorism has fallen in most regions, it has
become more widespread in others. Seven of the ten
countries with the largest increase in terrorism were in subSaharan Africa.

- Burkina Faso had the largest increase in terrorism, where
deaths increased by 590 per cent to 593. This was followed
by Sri Lanka where terrorism deaths increased from one in
2018 to 266 in 2019.

- Afghanistan remains the country with the highest impact
from terrorism. However, terrorism deaths in the country
declined in 2019 for the first time in three years.

Cold war foes US, Russia spark biggest military spending a decade

STOCKHOLM - Global military spending surged the most in a decade last year, boosted by Cold War foes the United States and Russia, as well as China, Saudi Arabia, and India.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on April 27 that those five countries accounted for 62 percent of the $1.92 trillion doled out in global military expenditures in 2019.

Compared to 2018, total global military spending rose by 3.6 percent and represented the largest annual growth in spending since 2010.

U.S. military spending increased by 5.3 percent to $732 billion, accounting for 38 percent of global expenditures. That sum is almost as much as the next 10 highest spenders combined.

Russia, meanwhile, continued two decades of rising military expenditures at $65.1 billion in 2019, a 4.5 percent increase from 2018.

"The recent growth in U.S. military spending is largely based on a perceived return to competition between the great powers," said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at SIPRI.

China's military expenditure reached $261 billion in 2019, or a 5.1 percent increase compared to the year before.

Russia's military expenditure last year, the fourth highest in the world, was 175 percent higher than in 2000 and now accounts for 88 percent of military spending in Eastern Europe.

"At 3.9 percent of its GDP, Russia's military spending burden was among the highest in Europe in 2019," said Alexandra Kuimova, a researcher at SIPRI.

NATO Spending

Meanwhile, all 29 NATO member states combined spent $1.04 trillion, with large increases from Germany and Central and Eastern European alliance members.

In 2019, Bulgaria increased spending by 127 percent due to the purchase of new combat aircraft and Romania spent 17 percent more. Poland, which accounted for 38 percent of the total for Central Europe in 2019, has increased its military spending by 51 percent in the past decade.

Germany, which has come under pressure from the United States and other NATO members for not hitting alliance defense-spending targets, upped military spending by 10 percent to $49.3 billion.

"The growth in German military spending can partly be explained by the perception of an increased threat from Russia, shared by many North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states," said Diego Lopes da Silva, a researcher at SIPRI.

In the Middle East, Iran's military expenditure in 2019 dropped by 15 percent to $12.6 billion compared to a year earlier despite escalating tensions with the United States and regional rivals. This followed a 23-percent decrease in 2018.

SIPRI said the steep fall in Iranian military expenditures coincided with U.S. sanctions following Washington's exit from the 2015 international nuclear accord.

The drop in Iranian military spending came despite its main regional rival Saudi Arabia spending $62 billion on its military in 2019, a high 8 percent of economic output.

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‘Spectre of poverty’ hangs over tribes and indigenous groups: UN

GENEVA - Indigenous and tribal communities are around three times more likely to face extreme poverty than others with women “consistently at the bottom of all social and economic indicators”, UN labour experts said on Monday.

Highlighting new data showing that disproportionate numbers of indigenous people live on less than $1.90 a day – 18.2 per cent versus 6.8 per cent of non-indigenous people - the International Labour Organization (ILO) insisted that millions are being held back by a “spectre of poverty”.

The problem warrants global attention because this at-risk population is significantly larger than was previously thought, ILO insists.

According to the UN organization, there are more than 476 million indigenous people globally, the majority of whom live in relatively prosperous countries.

Lacking support

At the same time, support for the only international treaty that protects their rights - Convention No. 169 - is weak, it maintains.

Only 23 of ILO’s 187 Member States have signed the convention on the rights of indigenous peoples in the 30 years since it was adopted.

This means that only around 15 per cent of indigenous peoples stand to benefit from the treaty’s focus on implementing policies and legislation designed to combat poverty and unfair treatment and promote equality through inclusive dialogue and best practice.

Focusing on the world of work as a key indicator of the lives of indigenous people, the ILO found that far more of them are active in the informal sector - by 20 per cent - compared with other workers.

And based on data from 23 countries that are home to more than 80 per cent of indigenous people, the ILO report found that indigenous women face the biggest challenges too.

In addition to having the lowest chance of completing basic primary education, only about one in four indigenous women is in salaried work, compared with one in two non-indigenous female workers.

Indigenous earn less

Researchers also noted that even when they are in salaried work, indigenous people earn around 18 per cent less than the wider workforce.

According to the ILO, there are more than 5,000 distinct indigenous communities worldwide, in some 90 countries.

Regionally, Latin America and the Caribbean are home to the highest proportion of indigenous and tribal people, at 8.5 per cent of the total population - far more than the entire population of Colombia.

Data from nine countries in this same region also showed that these indigenous communities constituted almost 30 per cent of the extreme poor – the highest proportion across all global regions.

Mirroring this trend elsewhere, ILO underlined that in Africa, the more than 77 million indigenous people there – six per cent of the wider population – accounted for 24 per cent of the continent’s extreme poor.

In Asia and the Pacific, the region’s 335 million indigenous people comprised over seven per cent of the total population, and almost 16 per cent of the extreme poor, based on data from five countries.

The trend was also identified to a lesser extent in Northern America, where the over seven million indigenous people constituted over two per cent of the wider population and 3.5 per cent of the poorest members of society.

Let them be heard

ILO believes that indigenous people’s views need to be heard in order to put in place sustainable social justice policies that are detailed in Convention No. 169.

These will help to tackle the problems that indigenous people face, including poverty, inequality, conflict and climate change, the UN organization believes.

Nonetheless, although “several countries” have designated agencies for indigenous affairs and have made the “greatest progress” so far, there have been too few opportunities for engagement with minority communities to date, the ILO maintains.

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