You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

We are facing a crisis of trust in the very institutions and systems that built our modern world.

In this talk, international affairs and

development expert Kahir Danani explores why the old way of getting every nation into the

negotiation room no longer works and asks us to reconsider what global cooperation looks like

and why it matters that we rebuild it.

The next time you take an international trip, do me a favor.

Take a look at your passport.

On the cover, there's your country's coat of arms.

And then you open it, and there's your photograph.

The best one you've ever taken, right?

On that page, there's two lines at the bottom, letters and numbers.

That's called the Machine Readable Zone.

Those two lines are magic, the product of international cooperation. Because without them, you wouldn't be able to get on that plane. You wouldn't be able to cross immigration. You wouldn't be able to travel the

world, see your family. Now, what I find fascinating is that those two lines came about in 1980 when the International

Civil Aviation Organization set about standardizing passports.

At the beginning, only three countries adopted the standard.

Today, just about every single country has that standard. This is international cooperation at its best.

And it doesn't stop there.

Did you know that 160 years ago,

20 countries came together

...