Rabat – The Institute for Economics and Peace’s latest Global Terrorism Index (GTI) report has ranked Morocco as a country with “very low impact” of terrorism, underlining the North African nation’s efforts in fighting terrorism both locally and globally.
This year’s GTI comes to acknowledge the effectiveness of Morocco’s counter-terrorism methods, widely regarded as among the best in the world. The swift responses of the country’s anti-terrorism units are regularly detailed by the government and in the media.
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Published on March 1, the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) is “a comprehensive summary of key global trends in terrorism.”
It measures the impact of terrorism on different countries, while detailing the ranking of different nations on a scale that determines how well they handle terrorism at home and in their respective regions of the world.
The 2022 GTI ranks Morocco in 76th place, behind Togo and barely ahead of Norway. The index ranking system gives a higher figure to the countries suffering the most from terrorism. The lower a country’s GTI score, the safer it is from terrorism.
Morocco‘s GTI score increased up to 1.156 out of 10 in the past year, while it was only 0.565 out of 10 in 2020.
Morocco’s rank in 2022 also dropped by 2 from 74th in 2021. The country was ranked in 2020 at 102nd place, dropping down from 91st place in 2019.
The annual report of the Australia-based Institute for Economics & Peace assesses countries on four main indicators. The first is the total number of terrorist incidents over the course of a year. The second indicator is the number of deaths during those incidents. The third indicator is of the victims affected, and the final indicator is the material damage caused by the attacks.
Morocco remains this year in second place in the Maghreb, behind Mauritania, which ranked 84th with a score of 0.509. Algeria ranked third (39th in the world) with a score of 4.432, followed by Tunisia (38th, 4.447), and Libya (26th) with a high score of 5.100.
In the Middle East and North Africa region, Morocco comes 6th — behind the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Sultanate of Oman, and Sudan. Kuwait ranked 93rd with an impressive score of 0.
On the other hand, the countries most affected by terrorism in the MENA region are Iraq (2nd), scoring 8.511, Syria(5th), Egypt (15th), Yemen (21st), and Lybia (26th) with a score of 5.100.
Cesar A. Velasquez prepared a section devoted to Morocco’s part in the fight against terrorism. His report describes some of the most significant changes Morocco has made to its counterterrorism approach since 2003 and compares the results to the current African terrorism landscape.
It also explains how the new United Nations’ Counter-Terrorism Program will assist in the development, strengthening, and advancement of law enforcement and whole-of-society counterterrorism responses for the African continent.
Moroccan security forces have dismantled over 200 terrorist cells since 2004, made more than 3,500 terrorism-related arrests over the past two decades, and averted more than 300 planned terrorist acts.
“While no country can defeat terrorism with simple arrests, Morocco’s repressive measures have undoubtedly weakened terrorist organizations in the country while reducing the appeal of violent extremism internally,” Velasquez’s report notes.
He also points out Morocco’s active role in the fight against terrorism, explaining “that the country understands the threat, the interdependence of its counterterrorism methods, its application of both soft and hard measures, the facilitation of information sharing practices and the promotion of international cooperation as (indespensable, sic) against terrorism.”
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