Bernardo Ortíz, Ministry of Transport & Communications, Mexico; Roy Rojas, Road Safety Advisor at PAHO (Bloomberg project), Mexico; Emilio Oñate, National Traffic Safety Council, Chile; Dr Arturo Cervantes, Road Traffic Accident Prevention Centre, Mexico
General Victor Kiryanov
Carlos Macaya
Ministers participating at the First Road Safety Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean (EISEVI), held in Madrid on 23rd and 24th February have supported the call for a decade of action for road safety. 14 Ministers and Deputy Ministers and representatives of over 35 countries adopted the Madrid Principles which endorsed the Make Roads Safe campaign’s proposal for a decade of action with the goal of reducing forecast road traffic deaths by 50% by 2020. The Principles also supported the construction of a ‘Latin American and Caribbean Road Safety Common Space’ and encouraged the region’s countries to actively participate in the first ever global Ministerial meeting on road safety to be held in Moscow on November 19th and 20th.
Latin America and the Caribbean have the world’s highest per capita fatality rate from road crashes at 26 per 100,000 and this is forecast to rise above 30 per 100,000 by 2020. Already today road crashes are the main cause of mortality among the region’s youth. The Madrid Forum, therefore, signaled a new level of commitment to develop the region’s road safety policies and programmes and brought together key regional bodies including the Inter-American Development Bank, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pan American Health Organisation.
Ministers speaking in Madrid included Karla Gonzalez, Costa Rica’s Minister of Transport; Michael Henry Jamaica’s Minister of Public Works; and Jose Cordova Villalobos, Mexico’s Minister of Health. Other speakers included Enrique Iglesias, General Secretary of the Ibero-American Secretariat (SEGIB); Pamela Cox, Vice President of the World Bank; Carlos Macaya, Chairman of the FIA Foundation; and General Viktor Kiryanov, Deputy Minister of the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation.
The Madrid meeting was attended by 680 participants, predominantly from the Latin America and Caribbean Regions, and was organized by the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), in close cooperation with the Spanish Traffic General Directorate (DGT), the World Bank through its Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF), the FIA Foundation and the MAPFRE Foundation. It was also supported by the Transitional Commission for Road Safety for Latin America and the Caribbean and the Royal Automobile Club of Catalonia (RACC). The Madrid Conference agreed to hold a second road safety forum in 2011.
Download the Madrid Principles SEGIB February 2009 document (.doc / 30kb) >
See the SEGIB website for more information >