Lord Robertson urges international community to seize ‘opportunity of Moscow Conference’

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Chairman of the Commission for Global Road Safety, has urged world leaders to make a strong commitment to tackling road deaths when ministers meet at the 2009 Moscow Conference on global road safety.

Lord Robertson addresses the CIS Parliamentary Road Safety Congress

General Arcady Yedelev, Deputy Minister of Interior of the Russian Federation

HRH Prince Michael of Kent presents his road safety award to Sergey Mironov, Speaker of the Russian Senate

Speaking on 17th September at an international road safety congress in St Petersburg organised by the Russian government and the Confederation of Independent States, Lord Robertson reminded delegates that the death toll in an air crash in the Russian town of Perm a few days before was being replicated daily on Russia’s roads. “Here in the Russian Federation, 90 families lose a member to a road crash every day. Around the world, more than 3,500 families are bereaved in this way every day.”

Lord Robertson thanked the Russian government for offering to host the first UN Conference on global road safety and said: “We must work together to ensure that the meeting is an historic success, a real breakthrough for international efforts to cooperate on improving road safety. We would like to see a sustained effort, between now and 2020, to work together, to invest and to share knowledge, so that we can master this man-made disaster and reclaim the roads for life…This, then, is the opportunity presented by the Moscow Conference”.

Deputy Minister of Interior of the Russian Federation General Arcady Yedelev stressed the importance of the UN’s road safety agenda for his country. “The General Assembly of the United Nations recognised at the end of March that the global community is going through a worldwide crisis on the roads,” he said. “In our country we decided to do everything we can to save human lives. We used international experience and we took the forecasts on board.”

General Yedelev said that in the two years since the Russian government introduced new policies for road safety, casualty figures had been reduced. He said that Russia had adopted a systematic approach to the problem from central government agencies through to local authorities. In a meeting of the central State Council just before the CIS Assembly the Russian government had recognised that “road accidents jeopardise homeland security” and reaffirmed its commitment to tackling the problem at both national and global levels.

HRH Prince Michael of Kent, the Patron of the Commission for Global Road Safety, also spoke at the event, held in the historic Tavricheskiy Palace, and praised the Russian Federation for its leadership in global road safety. He presented a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award to Sergey Mironov, Speaker of the Russian Senate and Chairman of the CIS International Road Safety Congress, in recognition of the high political commitment shown by Russia in both its domestic and international response to road traffic injuries.

Download speech by Lord Robertson to CIS Road Safety Assembly (.pdf / 38kb) >

Download speech by HRH Prince Michael of Kent (.pdf / 37kb) >

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