DENIS MIZNE

Executive Director, Instituto Sou da Paz

As founder and executive director of Instituto Sou da Paz (I’m for Peace Institute), a São Paolo-based advocacy group, Mizne is one of the most prominent and effective voices in Brazil today on the issue of public safety. Through his group’s campaigns and citizen mobilization, Mr. Mizne influences public policy related to security at the local and national level. In 2004, after lobbying Brazil’s Congress to pass a gun control bill he helped write, Mr. Mizne was instrumental in removing a half million guns from his nation’s streets. As a result of highly successful efforts to reduce the homicide rate in the traditionally violent Jardim Angela district of São Paolo, Sou da Paz is now in charge of crime prevention strategies for three cities, including a pilot program in São Paolo. Through the Instituto, Mr. Mizne supports the disarmament of the population, the democratization of schools, and the improvement of police institutions in Brazil’s most impoverished regions.

In his first year as class representative in the Faculty of Law at the University of São Paulo, Mr. Mizne established the Autonomous Academic Party, an upstart political group that won the student council elections, and was subsequently re-elected for the following three years. The group’s principal achievements included making the student council fully sustainable, creating pre-entrance exam courses for perspective low-income students, and creating the Center for Human Rights. Mr. Mizne is increasingly devoting himself to regional and international violence-prevention initiatives.