The United Nations General Assembly has today approved the first ever global UN Conference on road safety, in an effort to reduce the rapidly growing death toll on the world’s roads.
The UN Conference, with participation at least at Ministerial level, will be held in the Russian Federation in 2009. The decision by the UN General Assembly marks a major victory for the Make Roads Safe campaign, which has advocated for such a governmental meeting.
Lord Robertson, Chairman of the Commission for Global Road Safety, which first proposed a global Ministerial conference in its Make Roads Safe report of 2006, addressed the UN General Assembly today and will be meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the global road safety crisis. He said:
“I am delighted that the UN has today recognised the scale of human suffering and economic loss caused by road traffic deaths and injuries. Now we must ensure that the UN Conference is not just another talking shop, but secures real commitments and takes real action to reverse the tide of global road deaths.”
During the General Assembly session, the UN heard that road deaths are now the number one killer of young people aged 10-24 worldwide. Overall, each year more than1.2 million people are killed and 50 million injured. The latest forecasts show that unless action is taken, more than twenty million lives could be lost from 2000-2015, with a doubling of the annual death rate by 2030.
The Make Roads Safe campaign will be promoting a strong agenda for action to the UN Ministerial conference, including:
- Calling on the international community to fund, at minimum, a 10 year, $300 million, action plan to increase road safety capacity in middle and low income countries;
- To ensure that 10% of road infrastructure budgets funded by international donors should be earmarked for safety.
Contact:
Avi Silverman, Make Roads Safe on +44 7967 229374 or +44 207 747 5181
Saul Billingsley, Make Roads Safe on +44 780 398 7250
Notes to editors
Photos of Lord Robertson and actress Michelle Yeoh, global Make Roads Safe ambassador meeting Ban Ki-moon available on request.
www.makeroadssafe.org