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  • About 12 years ago,

  • I gave up my career in banking

  • to try to make the world a safer place.

  • This involved a journey into national and global advocacy

  • and meeting some of the most extraordinary people in the world.

  • In the process, I became a civil society diplomat.

  • Civil society diplomats do three things:

  • They voice the concerns of the people,

  • are not pinned down by national interests,

  • and influence change through citizen networks,

  • not only state ones.

  • And if you want to change the world, we need more of them.

  • But many people still ask,

  • "Can civil society really make a big difference?

  • Can citizens influence and shape national and global policy?"

  • I never thought I would ask myself these questions,

  • but here I am to share some lessons

  • about two powerful civil society movements that I've been involved in.

  • They are in issues that I'm passionate about:

  • gun control and drug policy.

  • And these are issues that matter here.

  • Latin America is ground zero for both of them.

  • For example, Brazil --

  • this beautiful country hosting TEDGlobal has the world's ugliest record.

  • We are the number one champion in homicidal violence.

  • One in every 10 people killed around the world is a Brazilian.

  • This translates into over 56,000 people

  • dying violently each year.

  • Most of them are young, black boys dying by guns.

  • Brazil is also one of the world's largest consumers of drugs,

  • and the War on Drugs has been especially painful here.

  • Around 50 percent of the homicides in the streets in Brazil

  • are related to the War on Drugs.

  • The same is true for about 25 percent of people in jail.

  • And it's not just Brazil that is affected by the twin problems of guns and drugs.

  • Virtually every country and city across Central and South America is in trouble.

  • Latin America has nine percent of the world's population,

  • but 25 percent of its global violent deaths.

  • These are not problems we can run away from.

  • I certainly could not.

  • So the first campaign I got involved with started here in 2003

  • to change Brazil's gun law

  • and to create a program to buy back weapons.

  • In just a few years,

  • we not only changed national legislation

  • that made it much more difficult for civilians to buy a gun,

  • but we collected and destroyed almost half a million weapons.

  • This was one of the biggest buyback programs in history --

  • (Applause) --

  • but we also suffered some setbacks.

  • We lost a referendum to ban gun sales to civilians in 2005.

  • The second initiative was also home-grown,

  • but is today a global movement to reform the international drug control regime.

  • I am the executive coordinator

  • of something called the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

  • The commission is a high-level group

  • of global leaders brought together to identify more humane

  • and effective approaches to the issue of drugs.

  • Since we started in 2008, the taboo on drugs is broken.

  • Across the Americas, from the US and Mexico to Colombia and Uruguay,

  • change is in the air.

  • But rather than tell you the whole story about these two movements,

  • I just want to share with you four key insights.

  • I call them lessons to change the world.

  • There are certainly many more,

  • but these are the ones that stand out to me.

  • So the first lesson is:

  • Change and control the narrative.

  • It may seem obvious,

  • but a key ingredient to civil society diplomacy

  • is first changing and then controlling the narrative.

  • This is something that veteran politicians understand,

  • but that civil society groups generally do not do very well.

  • In the case of drug policy,

  • our biggest success has been to change the discussion

  • away from prosecuting a War on Drugs

  • to putting people's health and safety first.

  • In a cutting-edge report we just launched in New York,

  • we also showed that the groups benefiting most from this $320 billion market

  • are criminal gangs and cartels.

  • So in order to undermine the power and profit of these groups,

  • we need to change the conversation.

  • We need to make illegal drugs legal.

  • But before I get you too excited,

  • I don't mean drugs should be a free-for-all.

  • What I'm talking about, and what the Global Commission advocates for

  • is creating a highly regulated market,

  • where different drugs would have different degrees of regulation.

  • As for gun control, we were successful in changing,

  • but not so much in controlling, the narrative.

  • And this brings me to my next lesson:

  • Never underestimate your opponents.

  • If you want to succeed in changing the world,

  • you need to know who you're up against.

  • You need to learn their motivations and points of view.

  • In the case of gun control,

  • we really underestimated our opponents.

  • After a very successful gun-collection program,

  • we were elated.

  • We had support from 80 percent of Brazilians,

  • and thought that this could help us win the referendum

  • to ban gun sales to civilians.

  • But we were dead wrong.

  • During a televised 20-day public debate,

  • our opponent used our own arguments against us.

  • We ended up losing the popular vote.

  • It was really terrible.

  • The National Rifle Association -- yes, the American NRA --

  • came to Brazil.

  • They inundated our campaign with their propaganda,

  • that as you know,

  • links the right to own guns to ideas of freedom and democracy.

  • They simply threw everything at us.

  • They used our national flag,

  • our independence anthem.

  • They invoked women's rights

  • and misused images of Mandela, Tiananmen Square, and even Hitler.

  • They won by playing with people's fears.

  • In fact, guns were almost completely ignored in their campaign.

  • Their focus was on individual rights.

  • But I ask you,

  • which right is more important,

  • the right to life

  • or the right to have a gun that takes life away?

  • (Applause)

  • We thought people would vote in defense of life,

  • but in a country with a recent past of military dictatorship,

  • the anti-government message of our opponents resonated,

  • and we were not prepared to respond.

  • Lesson learned.

  • We've been more successful in the case of drug policy.

  • If you asked most people 10 years ago if an end to the War on Drugs was possible,

  • they would have laughed.

  • After all, there are huge military police prisons

  • and financial establishments benefiting from this war.

  • But today, the international drug control regime is starting to crumble.

  • Governments and civil societies are experimenting with new approaches.

  • The Global Commission on Drug Policy

  • really knew its opposition,

  • and rather than fighting them,

  • our chair -- former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso --

  • reached out to leaders from across the political spectrum,

  • from liberals to conservatives.

  • This high level group agreed to honestly discuss

  • the merits and flaws of drug policies.

  • It was this reasoned, informed and strategic discussion

  • that revealed the sad truth about the War on Drugs.

  • The War on Drugs has simply failed across every metric.

  • Drugs are cheaper and more available than ever,

  • and consumption has risen globally.

  • But even worse,

  • it also generated massive negative unintended consequences.

  • It is true that some people have made these arguments before,

  • but we've made a difference

  • by anticipating the arguments of our opponents

  • and by leveraging powerful voices

  • that a few years ago would probably have resisted change.

  • Third lesson: Use data to drive your argument.

  • Guns and drugs are emotive issues,

  • and as we've painfully learned in the gun referendum campaign in Brazil,

  • sometimes it's impossible to cut through the emotions

  • and get to the facts.

  • But this doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.

  • Until quite recently,

  • we simply didn't know how many Brazilians were killed by guns.

  • Amazingly, it was a local soap opera called "Mulheres Apaixonadas" --

  • or "Women in Love" --

  • that kicked off Brazil's national gun control campaign.

  • In one highly viewed episode,

  • a soap opera lead actress was killed by a stray bullet.

  • Brazilian grannies and housewives were outraged,

  • and in a case of art imitating life,

  • this episode also included footage of a real gun control march

  • that we had organized right here,