Ministerial approved

The UN resolution supporting a first ever ministerial conference on road safety has been approved by the UN General Assembly. George Robertson, who first proposed the idea and has led the Make Roads Safe campaign, spoke in the debate on behalf of the UK delegation. He showed the general assembly a photo of his own car crash three decades ago, and spoke movingly about some of the people who have been less fortunate.

Michelle Yeoh joined George Robertson for a post-debate briefing for the press, then they presented the Make Roads Safe petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Michelle also gave the SG a child's motorcycle helmet from Vietnam.

So the ministerial has been approved, but right up to the last minute one large bloc of countries was still trying to water down the commitment to the ministerial - an attempt blocked by Ambassador Al-Hinai - and the hall of the General Assembly was half empty - a lot of countries were no-shows for this issue which is killing their citizens in the thousands.

It demonstrates that we still have a lot of work to do...

op-eds

A strong op-ed from Desmond Tutu today...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/desmond-tutu-millions-are-dying-on-the-worlds-roads-its-time-to-act-802747.html

and another by former US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/30/AR2008033001836.html

Nobel peace laureates urge action

Former President Carter, Desmond Tutu, President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica: 3 Nobel Peace Prize winners call for UN action on road safety today. Former Irish President and human rights chief Mary Robinson; Sonia Gandhi; former HIV/AIDS special envoy Stephen Lewis; Linda DeGutis, head of the US public health association, the world's largest. These are not people who can be ignored - they are all backing the Make Roads Safe campaign and calling for a UN ministerial conference to be approved by the UN today.

Also see the Guardian's leader column on the debate today http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/31/unitednations.internationalaidanddevelopment

a million names, a million lives

We've finally reached our target of getting one million people to sign the Make Roads Safe campaign petition to the UN, thanks to a lot of hard work by some very dedicated people across the world.

It is sobering to look at the fairly large mountain of paper required to contain a million names - a list that roughly equates to the number of people who lose their lives on the roads of developing countries each year. The picture above shows maybe a quarter of the total...

Draft UN resolution published

After two weeks of drafting, amending and back and forth the draft resolution which will be the basis for the debate on Monday has been published.

The key passage:

The General Assembly,

Welcomes the offer by the Government of the Russian Federation to host and provide the necessary financial support for the First Global High-Level (Ministerial) Conference on Road Safety, to be held in 2009, to bring together delegations of Ministers, and representatives relating to transport, health, education, safety, and related traffic law enforcement, to discuss progress in implementing the recommendations of the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention and the General Assembly resolutions on improving global road safety, and provide an opportunity for Member States to exchange information and best practices;

"The stakes could hardly be higher"

So says Kevin Watkins, previewing the UN general assembly debate in a op-ed for the Guardian today, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/26/globalisation .

Kevin has campaigned for some important causes: fair trade, free education, the Make Poverty History campaign, and most recently he authored the 2007 UN Human Development Report on climate change. Now he is pushing for road safety to be included on the global development agenda. His article is a powerful call to arms.

An editorial in the 22nd March medical journal The Lancet also raises the temperature:

"March 31 could be a crucial turning point for the campaign to make roads safe, as the UN General Assembly will meet to debate whether to hold a first ministerial meeting on road safety in 2009...By voting for a ministerial meeting at the upcoming UN General Assembly, countries could take the first steps towards avoiding this delay and making road-traffic accidents the rarity that they should be" the Lancet says.

One week to go

There is a week to go to the UN debate.

The draft resolution has been the subject of a lot of interest and intervention from delegations at the UN in New York during the past week, with Ambassador Al Hinai chairing meetings and working the phones to try to reach agreement on a text to put to the General Assembly. There have been some attempts at watering down key commitments, which so far we've managed to prevent, but we're still hopeful for a strong resolution.

There is also a growing sense of momentum, with many national Make Roads Safe campaign organisations working to alert their governments and NY delegations to participate in the debate and show support for efforts to reduce global deaths.

We'll keep you posted on any developments over the coming days.

UN Environment chief writes...

A very helpful intervention from Achim Steiner, Director of the UN Environment Programme who has written to the President of the UN General Assembly, Dr Srgjan Kerim, adding UNEP's support for a Ministerial Conference.

Excerpts from Achim Steiner's letter below:

"As motorisation increases exponentially in developing countries, sustainability and safety remain low on the political agenda. Together we can act to change this.

"Promoting investment in road safety together with non-motorised transport (e.g. sidewalks and cycle lanes) will have significant impact on health (air quality) and climate change (greenhouse gas emissions) - particularly in urban areas".

"A UN General Assembly resolution supporting a Ministerial Conference on global road safety will serve to increase high level political commitment and financial resources for this work".

Good to see the UN's environmental arm connecting the dots and seeing the impact of road safety on other agendas. Its just a shame there isn't a UN road safety or even transport arm that UNEP can hook up with...

Michelle Yeoh in Vietnam

We saw five or six ambulances arriving at the emergency ramp of the main hospital in Hanoi, all with road traffic victims, during a half hour stretch. In one of the hot and airless wards lay a young girl who had been hit as a pedestrian on the road. Her foot was to be amputated. She didn't really comprehend what was happening to her.

Make Roads Safe ambassador Michelle Yeoh spoke at a well attended press conference in Hanoi yesterday and got a lot of media coverage, across Vietnam and the wider region, for the campaign to get motorcycle helmets on children's heads.

She got across the urgency of the problem which was revealed so starkly by our meeting with LeXuan Han's mother and Michelle made a compelling case for both the Vietnamese government and parents individually to act. Michelle also met with a senior government road safety official, Bui Huynh Long, chief of the National Traffic Safety Committee and architect of Vietnam's tremendous success with adult helmets, who is clearly committed to saving lives.

Before the press conference, hosted at the World Bank, we participated in a 'Helmets for Kids' event, organised by the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation (AIPF). Their impressive and essential operation channels commercial and donor funds to buy helmets for young children, whole schools at a time. Yesterday 1500 children recieved helmets. Today I attended another HFK event where 1700 children were given helmets. AIPF follows up with regular school liaison, monitoring and refresher events to make sure the children keep wearing their helmets once the novelty has worn off. This is a non-profit model that could - and should - be working and saving lives in many more countries.

Han

Why do we need the UN to act on road safety? Here's a reason: Han.

LeXuan Han should have been celebrating her ninth birthday today. But she died three weeks ago.

She was riding on a motorcycle with her dad, mum and little sister Nhu. The parents were wearing crash helmets. The children were dressed for a party and didn't want the helmets to mess their hair. They were hit by another motorcycle and crashed. Nhu had concussion. Han died.

We're in Vietnam with movie star Michelle Yeoh, a global ambassador for the Make Roads Safe campaign. Today Michelle met Nhu and her mum. Nhu, a sweet little six year old, should have been at her sister's birthday party. Instead she played in a park while her mother talked about loss, grief, guilt and the pain of continuing. Han's mother is utterly devastated. Han's father is still in hospital with serious injuries and won't be working to support his family for some time. Nhu doesn't really understand yet that her sister won't be coming back.

One family torn apart. But a thousand families are riven in this way every day, losing a child or a young adult. Children like Han are dying because of speed, drink driving, badly designed roads and sometimes from simple mistakes: Vietnam introduced a new helmet law in December, rigorously enforced, which brought adult compliance rapidly to 99%. But the law covering children was badly drafted and unenforceable, so parents simply haven't bothered to protect their children or, in the case of Han, tragically lapsed for one short trip one Sunday morning because they were going to a party.

How does this connect to the UN General Assembly debate and or demand for UN action? Because if road safety has a higher profile, if people better understand the causes and consequences of road injuries, if countries share experiences and lessons, then fatal mistakes - at every level - of the kind that killed Han will be less likely to happen.

What better reason could there be?

Drafting at the UN

Ambassador Al Hinai of Oman has held meetings with country missions all day today and yesterday discussing the draft resolution on global road safety. The Omani mission is working flat out to consult with diplomats and provide information on the proposals. More meetings are scheduled for next week.

UN missions meet on resolution

Government delegations at the UN in New York held their first meeting today to discuss the drafting of a new UN resolution on global road safety. Convened by Fuad Al Hinai, the Omani Ambassador to the UN, the meeting brought together officials from nearly 50 governments, including the US, Russia, China, Japan, the UK and the EU. Countries including the Phillippines, Morocco, Thailand and Indonesia also participated. A briefing from the Make Roads Safe campaign was circulated at the meeting - a follow up meeting will be held next week.

Talking shop or turning point?

Will a UN ministerial conference on global road safety change anything? How does getting a bunch of people together in a room in Moscow make a difference to road safety in Africa or Asia?

The first thing a ministerial conference will do is to provide profile and visibility for the issue, and for the millions of people being killed and injured on the roads each year. Global road safety has a very low profile, despite killing on the scale of Malaria or Tuberculosis, because politicians aren't seeing a big picture. Road crashes are often accepted as random events, acts of fate, or something that can be kept manageable with a little budget allocation and a few traffic police. The bigger picture, in terms of the impact on development and health, is rarely recognised. The cost benefits of putting in place driver training, safe road infrastructure, vehicle design standards and strong enforcement are clear, but not always well communicated.

A ministerial conference can begin to address this problem on two levels - increasing the political profile and raising the demand that something be done, and establishing and improving links between countries which have built up knowledge and capacity and countries that need this advice and assistance. Every major issue - HIV/AIDS, climate change, malaria, children's rights - has needed global meetings of governments to build momentum and get things moving - global road safety needs this too.

Welcome to our campaign diary

Welcome to the Make Roads Safe campaign's UN diary, where we are counting down to a potentially historic debate on global road safety at the UN General Assembly in New York on 31st March.

For the past 21 months, since the Commission for Global Road Safety launched its Make Roads Safe report in June 2006, we have been campaigning across the world to persuade policymakers, and the public, that the road injury epidemic needs greater political commitment and funding. More than 900,000 people have signed the Make Roads Safe petition calling for a first ever UN Ministerial Conference, we are aiming for a million names by the time of the debate. Thanks to a broad coalition of road safety NGOs, automobile clubs and public health organisations who have mobilised support and political attention in their own countries, the issue of global road safety is now being discussed and publicised at an unprecedented level.

We are now working to get our proposal for a UN Ministerial Conference adopted in a new resolution at the UN General Assembly. It is more than a year since the proposal was first discussed by the UN - at the Inland Transport Committee in Geneva, where the UK government spoke up strongly in favour. Since then the Russian Government has offered to host the UN Conference and the Sultanate of Oman, which has played the leading role in promoting global road safety at the UN, authoring three previous resolutions, is spearheading efforts to get this new resolution approved.

We will be using this blog to post on the progress of our campaign over the coming month as we work towards the New York meeting.