The United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there were over 100 million displaced people as of May, 2022, which has left many people without adequate healthcare and strained local healthcare systems. While there is concern about violence that may be brought as a result of these large influxes of people, few are focused on attacks that are perpetrated on these displaced peoples. This study is a semi-quantitative analysis of terrorist attacks on refugees, refugee camps, internally-displaced peoples, and asylum seekers.

A retrospective search of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) was performed for all terrorist-related events from 1970 to 2020 that targeted refugees, refugee camps, internally displaced peoples (IDPs), and asylum seekers. The number of attacks, country of attacks, weapon types, numbers wounded, and numbers killed were collated into a Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet (Microsoft, Redmond Washington, USA) and analyzed.

There were a total of 683 attacks which resulted in a total of 3148 deaths and 4374 injuries from 1970-2020. These occurred in 56 countries, with Sudan having the largest number of attacks at 113, followed by Germany (71), Iraq (61), Nigeria (51), and Sweden (43). The most frequent weapons used were explosives (213), followed by firearms (210), incendiary (140), unknown (74), melee (45), and chemical (1).

Terrorist attacks against refugees/IDPs/asylum seekers resulted in 3148 deaths and 4374 injuries in 683 attacks. Sudan had the highest number of terrorist attacks, and the most frequent weapon used was explosives. Attacks against refugees pose unique challenges to government, NGO’s, and other stakeholders due to the lack of healthcare access and transient nature of this population. By understanding the scope and impact of terrorist-related attacks against this vulnerable population counter-terrorism medicine initiatives can be employed to improve healthcare access and outcomes.