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Make Roads Safe is a global road safety campaign established with the aim of securing political commitment for road traffic injury prevention around the world. The Make Roads Safe campaign recently played a leading role in arguing for and securing the first ever United Nations Ministerial Conference on global road safety, which was approved by the UN General Assembly on 31 March 2008 and was held in Moscow on 19 and 20 November 2009. The campaign also led the call for a UN Decade of Action for Road Safety to 2020, with the aim of reducing by half the predicted increase in global road deaths. On 2nd March 2010 the UN General Assembly approved a resoluion proclaiming a UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. The Decade of Action will be officially launched by the UN in 2011. The campaign was launched in June 2006 following the publication of the Make Roads Safe report by the Commission for Global Road Safety. The Commission, chaired by former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, made recommendations for increasing funding levels for global road safety and argued that the international community was ignoring the scale of road deaths – which World Health Organisation statistics show as ranking alongside Malaria and Tuberculosis in terms of global mortality. The Make Roads Safe campaign is coordinated by the FIA Foundation, a road safety NGO, and includes a coalition of public health and road safety organisations as partners. The campaign aims to raise public awareness of the scale of the road injury problem and to present this as a key issue for sustainable development. The Make Roads Safe campaign argues that tackling road injuries is vital for achieving many of the Millennium Development Goals, including targets for child mortality and health and education targets, because of the vital role played by access to roads in delivering these services. The campaign claims that, although the G8 has approved $1.2 billion for new road infrastructure in Africa, only $20 million has been allocated for road safety measures. The campaign argues that at least 10% of this infrastructure budget, and the similar budgets deployed worldwide by the World Bank, regional development banks and other donors, should be dedicated to road safety measures. If this principle was accepted in the case of Africa it would mean $120 million would be available for road safety measures such as safety assessments of road design, enforcement and education strategies. The Make Roads Safe campaign also calls for a $300 million, 10 year, Action Plan for road safety to build the capacity of developing countries to respond to their own road traffic injury problems
See also : Road-traffic safety (Criticism) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : Making Streets |
