A path to security for the world's deadliest countries

You are more likely to die violently if you live in a middle-income democracy with high levels of inequality and political polarization than if you live in a country at war, says democracy advisor Rachel Kleinfeld. This historical shift in the nature of violence presents an opportunity for everyday voters to act as a great force for change in their unbalanced societies. In this eye-opening talk, Kleinfeld unravels the causes of violence and offers a path to security for the world’s deadliest countries.

Picture your dream vacation.

Maybe you're dying to go
to Rio for Carnival.

Or you really just want to hang out
on a Mexican beach.

Or maybe you're going to join me
in New Orleans for Jazz Fest.

Now, I know it's less pleasant,

but picture, for a moment,

one of the most violent places on earth.

Did anyone think of the same place?

Brazil is the most violent country
in the world today.

More people have been dying there
over the last three years

than in Syria.

And in Mexico, more people have died
over the last 15 years

than in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In New Orleans, more people
per capita are dying

than in war-torn Somalia.

The fact is, war only results

in about 18 percent
of violent deaths worldwide.

Today, you are more likely
to die violently

if you live in a middle-income democracy

with high levels of income inequality

and serious political polarization.

The United States has four
of the 50 most violent cities on earth.

Now, this is a fundamental alteration
in the nature of violence, historically.

But it's also an opportunity.

Because while few people
can do much to end war,

violence in our democracies
is our problem.

And while regular voters
are a big part of that problem,

we're also key to the solution.

Now, I work at a think tank,

the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace,

where I advise governments
on what to do about violence,

but the dirty secret is,

most policymakers haven't figured out
these changes to violence today.

They still believe that the worst violence
happens in countries at war

or places that are too poor, too weak,

to fight violence and control crime.

And that had been my assumption too.

But if you look at a map
of the most violent places on earth,

you see something strange.

Some of them are at war,

and a few are truly failed states.

The violence in these places is horrific,

but they happen to have small populations,

so it actually affects few people.

Then there's South Africa,
Brazil, Venezuela.

These places are not poor.

Maybe they're weak.

My research assistant and I mapped places

based on how well they delivered
on World Bank projects

and whether they could get
public services to their people,

and if you did well on both of those,

if you could get sanitation
and electricity to your people

and deliver vaccines,

you were in the upper right-hand quadrant.

And then we overlaid that

with a map of places
where journalists were being murdered.

Some were happening in weak states,

but an awful lot of journalists
were being killed

in places plenty capable
of protecting them.

I traveled to every
settled continent on earth,

comparing places that had faced
massive violence and recovered

and those that hadn't,

and I kept seeing the same pattern.

I came to call it "privilege violence,"

because it happened
in highly unequal democracies,

where a small group of people

wanted to hold on
to inordinate power and privilege.

And if they didn't think they could
get those policies past the voters,

sometimes they would turn
to violent groups for help.

Drug cartels would finance
their campaigns.

Organized criminals
would help them get out the vote.

Gangs would suppress the vote.

And in exchange,
they'd be given free reign,

and violence would grow.

Take Venezuela.

It's the most violent country
in the world today,

if you look at deaths per capita.

Twenty years ago, the current regime
gained power in legitimate elections,

but they didn't want to risk losing it,

and so they turned to gangs,
called "colectivos," for help.

The gangs were told
to get out the vote for the government

and force people to vote for the regime
in some neighborhoods

and keep opposition voters
away from the polls in others,

and, in exchange, they'd be given control.

But if criminals have control,

then police and courts
can't do their jobs.

So the second stage in privilege violence

is that courts and police are weakened,

and politicians politicize budgets,

hiring, firing,

so that they and the violent groups
that they collude with stay out of jail.

Now, pretty soon, good cops leave,

and many that remain become brutal.

They start off, usually,
with rough justice.

They kill a drug dealer that they think
would be let off by the corrupt courts.

But over time, the worst of them realize
that there will be no repercussions

from the politicians they're in bed with,

and they go into business for themselves.

In Venezuela, nearly one in three murders
is by the security services.

Now, the poor are hit hardest
by violence all over the world,

but they're hardly going to turn
to such predatory cops for help.

So they tend to form vigilante groups.

But arm a bunch of 18-year-old boys,

and pretty soon, they devolve
into gangs over time.

Other gangs come in, mafias come in,

and they offer to protect people
from the other criminals

and from the police.

Unlike the state,

the criminals often try to buy legitimacy.

They give charity. They solve disputes.

Sometimes, they even
build subsidized housing.

The last stage of privilege violence
happens when regular people

start committing a significant
portion of the murder.

Bar fights and neighborhood
arguments turn deadly

when violence has become normal

and repercussions have evaporated.

To outsiders, the culture looks depraved,

as if something is deeply wrong
with those people.

But any country can become this violent

when the government is, by turns,
absent and predatory.

Actually, that's not quite true --

it takes one more step
for this level of violence to reign.

It takes mainstream society

to ignore the problem.

You'd think that would be impossible,

that violence at this level
would be unbearable,

but it's actually quite bearable
to people like you and me.

That's because,
in every society in the world,

even the most violent,

violence is highly concentrated.

It happens to people
on the wrong side of town,

people who are poor, often darker,

often from groups that are marginalized,

groups that mainstream society
can separate ourselves from.

Violence is so concentrated

that we're shocked
when the pattern deviates.

In Washington, DC, in 2001,

a young white college-educated intern

went missing after a hike in Northwest DC,

and her case was in the papers
nearly every day.

On the other side of town,

a black man had been killed
every other day that year.

Most of those cases
never made the papers even once.

Middle class society
buys their way out of violence.

We live in better neighborhoods.

Some people buy private security.

And we also tell ourselves a story.

We tell ourselves that most
of the people who are killed

are probably involved in crime themselves.

By believing that somehow
some people deserve to be murdered,

otherwise good people
allow ourselves to live

in places where life chances
are so deeply skewed.

We allow ourselves.

Because, after all, what else can you do?

Well, it turns out, quite a lot.

Because violence today
is not largely the result of war

but is because of rotten politics
in our democracies,

regular voters are
the greatest force for change.

Consider the transformation of Bogotá.

In 1994, Colombia's incoming president

was caught taking millions of dollars
in campaign contributions

from the Cali drug cartel,

and the capital was overrun
with gangs and paramilitary groups.

But fed-up voters overcame
really rabid partisanship,

and they delivered
nearly two-thirds of the vote

to an independent candidate,

enough to really overcome
business as usual.

On Mayor Mockus's first day in office,

the police barely bothered
to even brief him on homicide,

and when he asked why,
they just shrugged and said,

"It's just criminals killing criminals."

The corrupt city council

wanted to give police
even more impunity for brutality.

It's a really common tactic
that's used worldwide

when politicians want to posture
as tough on crime

but don't actually want
to change the status quo.

And research shows it backfires
all over the world.

If you throw a lot
of low-level offenders into jails,

usually already overcrowded jails,

they learn from each other
and they harden.

They start to control the prisons,
and from there, the streets.

Instead, Mockus insisted that police
begin investigating every death.

He fought the right-wing city council,

and he abandoned
SWAT-style police tactics.

And he fought the left-wing unions

and fired thousands of predatory cops.

Honest police were finally free
to do their jobs.

Mockus then challenged citizens.

He asked the middle class
to stop opting out of their city,

to follow traffic laws

and otherwise behave as if they shared
the same community of fate.

He asked the poor to uphold
social norms against violence,

often at immense personal risk.

And he asked the wealthy to give
10 percent more in taxes, voluntarily.

Sixty-three thousand people did.

And at the end of the decade that spanned
Mayor Mockus's two terms in office,

homicide in Bogotá was down 70 percent.

Audience: Whoo!

(Applause)

People in places with the most violence,

whether it's Colombia
or the United States,

can make the biggest difference.

The most important thing we can do
is abandon the notion

that some lives are just
worth less than others,

that someone deserves
to be raped or murdered,

because after all, they did something,

they stole or they did something
to land themselves in prison

where that kind of thing happens.

This devaluing of human life,

a devaluing we barely admit
even to ourselves,

is what allows the whole
downward spiral to begin.

It's what allows a bullet
shot in a gang war in Rio

to lodge in the head
of a two-year-old girl

climbing on a jungle gym nearby.

And it's what allows a SWAT team
hunting for a meth dealer in Georgia

to throw a flash bang grenade
into the crib of a little boy,

exploding near his face
and maiming him for life.

The fact is, most violence everywhere

happens to people
on the wrong side of town

at the wrong time,

and some of those people
are from communities

that we consider quite different.

Some of them are people
who have done horrible things.

But reducing violence begins
with privileging every human life,

both because it's right

and because only by prizing each life
as worthy of at least due process,

can we create societies
in which the lives of innocents are safe.

Second, recognize that today,

inequality within our countries

is a vastly greater cause of violence
than war between countries.

Now, inequality leads to violence
for a whole host of reasons,

but one of them is that it lets us
separate ourselves

from what's happening
on the other side of town.

Those of us who are
middle-class or wealthy,

who are benefiting from these systems,

have to change them
at immense cost to ourselves.

We have to pay enough taxes

and then demand that our governments
put good teachers in other kids' schools

and well-trained police
to protect other peoples' neighborhoods.

But, of course,
that's not going to do any good

if the government is stealing the money
or fueling the violence,

and so we also need better politicians
with better incentives.

The fact is, we actually know a lot
about what it takes to reduce violence.

It's policies like putting more cops

in the few places
where most violence occurs.

But they don't fit easily into the boxes
of the Left or the Right,

and so you need really honest politicians

who are willing to buck
knee-jerk partisanship

and implement solutions.

And if we want good politicians to run,

we need to start respecting politicians.

There's also a lot we can do to fight
privilege violence in other countries.

The most violent regimes
tend to be fueled by drugs,

and then they launder the profits
through financial systems

in New York and London,

through real-estate transactions,

and through high-end resorts.

If you use drugs,

know your supply chain top to bottom,

or admit the amount of pain
you're willing to cause others

for your own pleasure.

Meanwhile, I would love to see
one of those tourist sites

team up with investigative journalists

and create a little tiny icon --

right next to the one for free WiFi
and if a place has a swimming pool,

there could be a little tiny gun

for "likely criminal
money-laundering front."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

But until then,

if you're booking a place
in a dangerous country,

whether that's Jamaica or New Orleans,

do a little web research,

see if you can see any criminal ties.

And, to make that easier,

support legislation

that makes our financial systems
more transparent --

things like banning anonymous
company ownership.

Now, this all probably sounds
pretty quixotic,

kind of like recycling your cans,

just a tiny drop in the ocean
of a gigantic problem,

but that's actually a misconception.

Homicide has been falling for centuries.

Battle deaths have been
dropping for decades.

In places where people
have demanded change,

violent death has fallen,
from Colombia to New York City,

where homicide is down
85 percent since 1990.

The fact is, violence
will always be with us,

but it's not a constant.

It has been falling for centuries,
and it could fall further faster.

Could it drop by 25 percent
in the next quarter century, a third?

Many of us actually think it could.

I think of all the kids
who'd grow up with their dads,

all the families
that get their sisters back,

their brothers.

All it needs is one small push.

It needs us to care.

Thank you.

(Applause)