The Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center (GTTAC) documents the thousands of terrorist attacks—globally and domestically—that occur each year. GTTAC, by detailing various dimensions of each attack, familiarizes analysts, policymakers, scholars, and journalists with patterns of terrorism. The center defines terrorist attacks as the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a nonstate actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation. Data are collected daily. Updates are published annually in the Department of State’s report to Congress on terrorism, known as the Annex of Statistical Information: Country Reports on Terrorism.

State Department Releases 2021 Country Reports and Annex of Statistical Information on Terrorist Events Worldwide ​

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Bethesda, Md.—U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and the Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism have released the congressionally mandated Country Reports on Terrorism 2021 and the accompanying Annex of Statistical Information.

Development Services Group, Inc., through the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center, is proud to support the Department of State in preparing these reports and managing and maintaining the accompanying database of global terrorism incidents. Our data show, among other things, that the number of attacks and the number of fatalities each decreased by nearly 20 percent in 2021, from the previous year. However, a large part of the reductions can be explained by the situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban effectively took over the country by mid-August, severely curtailing open-source reporting of Afghan incidents.

Highlights From the 2021 Annex

  • In 2021 there were 8,354 terrorist incidents, resulting in 23,692 fatalities, 16,342 wounded, and 5,612 kidnapped.  2021 experienced 18 percent fewer terrorism incidents, 19 percent fewer fatalities, and 16 percent fewer wounded, but 25 percent more kidnappings, than in 2020.
  • In 2021, terrorist incidents occurred in 65 countries and territories. Of these, 89 percent were concentrated in three geographic regions: Western Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southern Asia.