Lord Robertson, Chairman of the Make Roads Safe campaign
Michelle Yeoh, Make Roads Safe Global Ambassador
Dmitry Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation has opened the first ever global Ministerial Conference on road safety in Moscow, making an unprecedented high level call for action on what he emphasised represents a worldwide growing global crisis of road deaths.
Addressing Ministers from more than 70 governments in a packed auditorium, President Medvedev called for a level of international action on road safety to match other major global issues. He also supported the call for a Decade of Action for Road Safety, a proposal first put forward by the Make Roads Safe campaign.
President Medvedev said: “Road safety is one of the most serious problems of international development requiring immediate action as a priority”.
He added: “We need coordinated international efforts. If we could coordinate in a similar way to the effort made for the global financial crisis we might have made more progress. This needs to be approached as a problem on the same level of the global recession or food security. The UN Decade of Action is important to coordinate all of our activity to this end.”
Like many countries, Russia would benefit from increased international cooperation on road safety if a Decade of Action was adopted, he said.
The President was joined on the high level panel by Lord Robertson, chairman of the Make Roads Safe campaign, as well as Russian Federation Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev; Ugandan Transport Minister John Nasasira; Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, Deputy Director General of WHO; World Bank Transport Director Jamal Saghir; and Jan Kubis, Executive Secretary UN Commission for Europe.
Make Roads Safe global ambassador Michelle Yeoh also delivered an address to the Opening Session of the summit, as did Casey Marenge, a road crash victim and Executive Director of the Chariots of Destiny NGO from Kenya.
Michelle Yeoh urged Ministers do use the power they have to save lives:
“I’ve seen the terrible impact of road crashes on people’s lives, when policy makers get it wrong, or ignore the problem, or decide it’s too expensive or difficult to fix,” she said. “This road death catastrophe is a silent epidemic – a quiet, unnecessary killer of your citizens and their children - and we all need to start shouting.”
Lord Robertson said that the world needs to wake up to the scale of the crisis. “We are looking at a death rate equivalent to 10 jumbo jet crashes every day. You can be sure that if 10 planes crashed today, tomorrow, the next day – and indeed every day – there would be a huge global outcry.
“In total, 1.3 million people are killed around the world each year. When I was at NATO, if someone had shown me these casualty figures I would have assumed that I was looking at the impact of a high-intensity civil conflict. There would have been calls for high profile humanitarian intervention. It’s surely now time to take global action to counter this global crisis.
Coinciding with the conference, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a $125 million donation – the largest ever single funding pledge to road safety. The UK Department for International Development also announced a £1.5 million pledge for the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility.
The donation follows much campaigning from Make Roads Safe for a $300m, ten year, global plan for catalytic action to begin to improve road safety.
Lord Robertson said: “The Make Roads Safe campaign first proposed a budgeted action plan for global road safety and this is a key contribution from Bloomberg. But we now have to ensure that other philanthropic organisations, multinational development banks, and indeed the donor community as a whole step up to contribute so that we can make a real difference on the ground.”
The five-year contribution from Bloomberg Philanthropies will support road safety work in ten countries which together account for nearly 50% of all road deaths. The focus of the project will be on reducing drink-driving, increasing the use of seatbelts, child restraints and motorcycle helmets, limiting speed, and strengthening trauma care. The project will also allow for continued monitoring of road safety at global and national levels.
The Moscow Ministerial conference was attended by more than 1000 delegates from over 120 countries, including many high level ministers, such as US Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood.
Download the Moscow Declaration here >
Download Lord Robertson's Moscow Ministerial speech (.pdf / 36Kb) >
Download Michelle Yeoh's Moscow Ministerial speech (.pdf / 40Kb) >
Download David Ward's Speech to the Closing Plenary on the Decade of Action (.pdf / 76Kb) >
See also:
CNN report >
BBC report >
Reuters report >
The Times report >
Moscow Times report >
Times of India report >