A new Canadian study has found there's been a sharp decline in the number of people killed by terrorists around the world.

Researchers from the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver have just released a Human Security Brief.

They've looked at three sets of data collected in the United Sates on domestic and international terrorism and they've found there's been a drop in the number of civilian fatalities from terrorist attacks.

Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Report project, says the decline is around 40 per cent, based on a review of the three major data sets in the United States.

Mr Mack says that decline is since 2001 and doesn't include deaths in Iraq.

"Two of these data sets that go back to 1998 aren't really counting consistently because if they're counting civilian fatalities in Iraq, of which there are thousands, they should also be counting civilian fatalities in Africa's civil wars, and they're simply not doing this," he said.

But even counting civilian fatalities in Iraq, Mr Mack says there has still been a decline.

"But the decline now doesn't start until 2007," he said.

"And what happens in 2007 is that just as Iraq was driving casualties up until that point, in 2007 civilian casualties overall declined radically in Iraq, and civilian casualties from terrorism as defined by these data sets also declined by about 40 per cent."

That decline, according to the researchers, has coincided with a sharp drop in support for terrorist groups in the Muslim world.

"If terrorist organisations don't have popular support they can't have a popular revolution," he said.

"If they don't have conventional military capability, they can't defeat governments by force.

"So essentially what we can say is that these Al Qaeda-type organisations, because they've lost so much public support, do not pose a threat to states; they're certainly not a threat, there's not a civilisational struggle going on here.

"They are obviously a threat to individuals, but that threat to individuals is relatively small compared to the threats that we get from wars or homicides or even traffic accidents."

Mr Mack says the figures on fatalities do depend on how terrorism is defined.

Terrorism," he said.

"It simply can't agree because of the old cliche that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

"And many G77 countries, developing world countries, argue that resistance against occupation should not be counted as terrorism. Western countries say that it should."

BYLINE: Sara Everingham