High‑level Meeting on Improving Global Road Safety - Multi-stakeholder panels, General Assembly, 80th session

A very good morning, everyone. I call to order the first multi-stakeholder panel of the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Improving Global Road Safety. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, this panel will address the following theme: strengthening multisectoral coordination for road safety, drawing on best practices and lessons from countries who have success— which have successfully reduced road traffic deaths I would like to use this opportunity to wish you a very warm welcome. It is an honor for me to serve as co-chair for this panel together with His Excellency Sheikh Rabul Alam, Minister of Road Transport and Bridges of Bangladesh. A summary of our discussion will be Presented during the closing segment this afternoon at 5:30 PM, and this in the General Assembly Hall. I will now deliver opening remarks in my capacity as co-chair of this panel. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues. Yesterday, member states adopted a progress declaration reaffirming our shared commitment to reducing road traffic deaths and injuries by at least 50% by the year 2030. The Declaration also reaffirms a fundamental ethical principle: no death, no serious injury on the roads is acceptable. The Declaration underscores the fact that governments bear the primary responsibility for improving road safety. This responsibility must be translated into institutions capable of delivering results: an empowered national lead agency with legal authority and accountability, predictable and sustainable funding, effective leadership, as well as national strategies with clear targets, timelines, budgets, and accountability frameworks. We know that progress is possible. However, it will not be achieved through isolated projects nor temporary campaigns. Progress requires for road safety to be institutionalized for it to become a long-term government priority. I very much look forward to hearing practical lessons which will be shared by our panelists. I now give the floor to my co-chair, His Excellency Sheikh Rabul Alam, Minister of Road Transport and Bridges of Bangladesh, who will deliver some opening remarks. Your Excellency, you have the floor.

Thank you. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, strong institutions are essential, but they must lead to action across the whole road transport system. The Progress Declaration calls for effective coordination among transport health, police, finance, education, environment, and local authorities, with clearly defined responsibilities and coherence between policies, plans, and implementations. It also commits governments to progressively transformation road transport through a safe system approach. This means combining safe infrastructure, safe speeds, safe vehicles, safe roads, use and effective post-crash response.

Thank you.

These elements must work together to— so that foreseeable human error does not result in death or grievous injuries. Delivery also involves actors beyond central government. Local authorities, companies, civil societies, academia, and young people all influence how the system performs. Their contributions are essential, but they must take place within a framework of clear government leadership and accountability. Our discussion should therefore focus not only on who participates, but on who different actors are coordinated to implement proven measures at scale and achieve measurable results. The central question of this panel is therefore, how can countries translate political commitment into strong institutions, coordinated implementation, and measurable reduction in death and serious injuries? Now, we shall first hear presentation by the panelists, and thereafter the floor will be open for comments, observations, and questions. As there is no established list of speakers, delegates— delegations wishing to speak after the presentation by the panelists are requested to press the microphone button. Starting now, representatives of accredited stakeholders wishing to make a statement are requested to approach the responsibilities of the Secretariat on the side of the gallery. I now give the floor to Ms. Detina Malsian, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Excellencies, distinguished ministers, ladies and gentlemen, it is really a pleasure to be here at this high-level meeting as we are all coming to a very decisive moment when we are talking about road safety. We are at the midpoint of the second decade of action. And yes, for UNICEF, which has long worked with all partners and institutions to achieve road safety, I think this is a particularly important moment. Why? Because we have an extensive experience, and it's where many of the legal instruments, UN legal instrument that concern road safety are being developed and regulations about their application are put in place. So how can UNICEF help even more to address these challenges? And for us, I think the key vision, the policy vision is very simple. Every person should benefit from proven road safety solutions. Because yes, we have more than 60 conventions related to inland transport. Yes, we have more than 200 UN vehicle regulations, standards for that, but who are those, which countries really have the capacity to implement that? This is why during the Inland Transport Committee, which is the United Nations platform for or inland transport, we bring together countries and we try to address this gap that we see. Countries do not need to reinvent the wheel. The main idea is that we need to adopt and institutionalise the proven safety instruments that member states, you collectively adopt, and in order to achieve some measurable reductions in deaths and serious injuries, countries must implement these instruments through strong national road safety systems that connect transport, health, education, law enforcement, and also finance authorities around this safe system approach. And I would like to highlight a few of the very concrete examples of how we can align this pillar of a safe system approach and how countries can act on them. As I have mentioned, there are— UNECE brings more than 200 UN vehicle regulations under the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations. I would say a more recent example is that countries have adopted the automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection. This has seen serious injuries decrease by up to 44%.

4%.

Just think about this. One technology, one standard that can make such a difference. And there are many more developments, including the recent developments of automated driving system, the new rules that have been adopted. We have high expectations that it will bring the numbers down of this, as our esteemed special envoy says, pandemic. But what is very important that the countries must also ensure that safety does not stop when a vehicle leaves the factory. So it's not only about how we build the cars. Technical defects contribute to up to 25% of fatal crashes in middle-income countries. This is why periodical technical vehicle inspections are such an important measure. And I know that including— I was just checking how many countries are members to this legal instrument and how much more we can do, and we are ready to assist with this. So, for us, it's very important to deliver on these results, but we cannot do this alone. It's not enough to have regulations. Partnerships are very important. This is why, in this panel, having IREP, or— that bring evidence on safer roads. Yours brings the voice and leadership of young people, and Amazon reflects the important roles of the private sector. So the message today is that we can do as many regulations as possible and legal frameworks, but without a strong partnership among governments, civil society, private sector, academia, and the local authorities, cities, urban environments, we are not able to deliver. UNICEF stands ready to work with all of you, in particular with the countries that would like to advance and adopt these regulations, to support and work together to achieve the goals that we have set in this decade of action. Thank you so much.

I thank Ms. Iratina Molsian. Now, I I give the floor to Mr. George Smith, Chief Executive Officer of the International Road Assessment Programme.

Thank you very much. Excellencies, delegates, good morning. Yesterday, the Minister from Ireland talked about the importance of listening, and I always find that's very good advice. On the sidelines of this meeting, a delegate shared a story with me that I think many of you will have heard before.

He—

when he proposed investing more in road safety, his colleagues responded, why spend extra money on roads that already meet design standards? Wouldn't that money be better spent building another road? I think that simple question captures one of the biggest challenges that we face. Many of our design standards were developed for a different era when moving vehicles efficiently was often the sole objective. Today we have— we also expect our roads to safely accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, connections to public transport, and rapidly growing communities. Our challenge is no longer simply to meet yesterday's standards, it's to deliver safety outcomes that today's communities expect. Because every road is designed, every road reflects a series of decisions about how safely people will travel, whether a child can walk safely to school, whether a motorcyclist can survive a mistake, and whether a crash becomes a tragedy. And people make mistakes. The question is whether our roads are designed so that those mistakes cost lives. The good news is that we know how to build safe roads and manage speeds. Countries including the United Kingdom, Thailand, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, Senegal, and China have all shown that evidence-based investment in safer infrastructure saves lives. The challenge now is to ensure that every road investment is assessed, financed, and delivered with a clear safety outcome. First, it must be assessed. That's why Global Road Safety Performance Targets number 3 and 4 are so important. They shift the focus from reflecting on how many deaths have occurred to proactively managing infrastructure risk. Today, governments have access to globally validated tools, including the IRAP STAR ratings, that help assess risk, prioritize investment, and measure progress. Thanks to the support of our donors and partners, those tools are freely available so that every country can benefit from the world's collective experience. experience. Perhaps the most important question a minister can ask before approving a road investment is, what star rating will this investment deliver? Because once that question is asked, safety moves from being an afterthought to a central design question. These tools also help us focus on where we can have the greatest impact. Around half of a country's road deaths typically occur on about 10% of its roads. Second, we must finance road safety. Public funding remains essential, but it's not enough to close the gap of this magnitude on its own. Governments need to mobilize sustainable finance by working with development partners, the private sector, and investors while ensuring that every road investment, whether it's publicly funded or privately financed, delivers clearly defined safety outcomes. Safety should become a core investment objective, not an optional design feature. Third, we need to deliver safety interventions at scale. We've spent the last 2 decades proving that safer roads and safer speeds save lives. Research with Johns Hopkins University estimates that later this year, projects delivered by governments development partners, NGOs, and the private sector, and using the IRAP methodology, will have prevented an estimated 1 million deaths and serious injuries. That tells us that this approach works. But despite that progress, most roads around the world still do not reach the 3-star or better level of safety for all road users. The era of proving what works is over. Now we need to apply what works across entire networks, not just individual projects. Advances in big data, artificial intelligence, computer vision are rapidly reducing the time and cost of assessing networks. We can now see a future where every single road and every single new road design can have a star rating, allowing governments to spend less time measuring and more time acting. So my simple message is this. IRAP is here to help assess every road investment. Let's finance safer outcomes, and let's scale what works across entire road networks, because the true measure of a road investment isn't whether it meets yesterday's standards, it's whether it delivers today's safety outcomes. IRAP is here to work with you all throughout the remaining years of this decade of action to save lives.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I thank, I thank Mr. George Smith. I now give the floor to Ms. Sanaya Al-Kasani, youth representative for Youth for Road Safety.

Thank you, Your Excellency. Excellencies, co-chairs, distinguished delegates, colleagues, and friends. Road safety does not suffer from a shortage of promises. It suffers from a shortage of consequences when those promises are not delivered. We have declarations, targets, and action plans, but can a child cross safely because a target exists? Can a cyclist survive because a strategy was published? Can a family hold a system accountable if they do not know who was responsible, what was funded, or why nothing changed? This is the accountability gap, and young people live inside it. We are highly visible when systems fail. We appear in fatality figures and hospital records, yet remain far less visible when roads are designed, when budgets are allocated, and progress is measured. Why are young people consulted after danger is experienced but excluded while danger is being designed? We recognize that young people can take risks on the road, and promoting safer behavior remains essential, but behavior change alone cannot explain why young people face dramatically different risks depending on where they live. If young people were simply problematic road users, why do death rates vary so widely across countries? The answer lies beyond behavior. It lies in the systems we build. Seeing young people only as beneficiaries to be educated is short-sighted. They are partners who can help design, advocate, and hold those systems accountable. So meaningful youth participation is not a favor, it is a safeguard against institutional blind spots. Yet symbolic representation remains common. It photographs well and changes very little. A microphone without a mandate, a seat without influence, a consultation without consequence. The question is not simply, were young people invited? The question is, What were they able to change? Could we influence policy, challenge the budget, review implementation, and see what happens after the meetings end? Participation without feedback is not accountability. Institutions and governments often collect our stories, our evidence, our ideas, but rarely explain what was accepted, what was rejected, and why. And accountability should not require detective work. Every national road safety plan should make 5 things clear: what will be done, who is responsible, when will it happen, how much has been funded, and how progress will be publicly measured. If those answers are difficult to find, accountability has already begun to disappear. But young people can help to make it visible again. A young woman knows when a bus stop feels unsafe after dark, which defines a design failure. A cyclist knows where a protected lane disappears, so mapping becomes a preventable risk. A student who sees drivers speeding outside the school gate is not sharing an opinion, they are exposing an enforcement gap. This is participation as accountability. Lived experiences organized into evidence, and evidence translates into advocacy, and advocacy connected directly to decisions, and those decisions should be followed by public reporting. But let us be honest as well. Influence without resources is an illusion. We cannot ask youth to collect data, advise governments, and monitor implementation with enthusiasm alone. Meaningful participation requires funding, training, mentorship, and access to information. Not funding youth visibility, but funding youth influence. Youth-led action is not small by nature. It becomes small when institutions keep it small, praising it without funding it and showcasing it without connecting it to power. Excellencies, Accountability is shared. Governments bring authority and experts bring knowledge. Civil society brings scrutiny and funders bring resources. Young people bring proximity to today's risks and a stake in tomorrow's consequences. So every road safety system should ask, are we protecting people or are we merely becoming more sophisticated at documenting their loss. Please do not invite youth only to stand beside your commitments. Give them the power to test them, track them, challenge them, and help deliver them. Meaningful youth participation is not the soft side of road safety. It is a governance reform. Let us— let this be the last decade in which young people are counted as mainly after the crash, let this be the decade in which they are trusted before it, because accountability is not measured by how carefully we count the lives we lose. It is measured by how courageously we prevent their loss.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Miss—

thank you.

Ms. Sanaya Alkassani. Now I give the floor to Ms. Sarah Roots, Vice President of Amagen.

Good morning. It is an honor to join this distinguished panel, and I want to thank the General Assembly for convening this meeting. At the midpoint of the second decade of action for road safety, Meeting the 2030 goal of cutting road traffic deaths in half demands the kind of multisectoral coordination we're here to discuss today. As this audience knows, road incidents remain one of the leading causes of death globally, with nearly 1.2 million lives lost each year. That is not just a number. It represents families, communities, and futures cut short, and we believe It is preventable. That is why Amazon is here today. At Amazon, road safety isn't a side initiative. It's central to how we operate. We have more than 70,000 trailers and 90,000 delivery vans on roads across more than 20 countries. We work with over 4,500 independent small businesses that employ drivers delivering millions of packages daily. That scale means we have both a responsibility and an opportunity to drive meaningful change. Since 2019, Amazon has invested more than $2.5 billion in safety innovation across our global operations. On the road, this includes tools that support drivers delivering on our behalf, including real-time feedback systems, commercial vehicle optimized routing, and predictive weather monitoring. These are approaches that can be adapted well beyond our own fleet. We've also invested heavily in our Delivery Service Partners Program. These are independent entrepreneurs, including many in communities that need economic opportunity most. We provide them with tools, technology, and resources because we know that early intervention of unsafe behavior is far more effective than reviewing it after the fact. For example, in places where two-wheel delivery is common, we are piloting tools that increase rider visibility and deploying telematics to reduce risky riding behaviors. Two-wheelers account for a disproportionate share of road fatalities globally, and we believe technology can close that gap. This is a model that can scale beyond Amazon. When companies invest in the safety capacity of their supply chains and when governments create frameworks that incentivize that investment, we create a multiplier effect. Simply stated, no single company, government, or organization can solve road safety alone, including Amazon. But here's what we've seen work. When the private sector brings scale, technology, and operational expertise to the table, And when governments bring frameworks, infrastructure, and convening power, we move faster together. Amazon's systemic approach to road safety was recently recognized with the highest 3-star rating from the FIA Road Safety Index. We're proud of that recognition, but we see it as a starting point, not a finish line. Our vision is to become the global benchmark for safety excellence. We want to improve the standards for all road users globally, including through the efforts I've just outlined. We also partner with highway safety organizations to run public-facing campaigns that protect pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable road users in the communities where we operate. Road safety doesn't stop at the edges of our fleet. The progress declaration this meeting will adopt calls for inclusive participation. Amazon supports that because the scale of the road safety challenge is massive. It will require all of the collective capability in this chamber— governments, international organizations, civil society, youth advocates, and the private sector— all focused on the same goal. If we continue to share what works, challenge each other to go further, and stay focused on the belief that every incident is preventable, we have a real opportunity to improve safety globally. Thank you, and I look forward to the discussion.

Merci beaucoup.

Je donne maintenant la parole aux participants.

Thank you very much. I now open the floor for the participants for their comments and questions. I would like to remind delegations that there is no pre-established list of speakers. Participants wishing to take the floor are invited to press the microphone button. In giving the floor, member states will be interspersed with representatives of observers, United Nations system entities, and stakeholders. Delegations are also reminded that the time limit for interventions will be 3 minutes for individual statements and 5 minutes for statements on behalf of groups. And this limit will be strictly enforced by means of automatic microphone cutoff. To assist delegations in managing their time, a countdown clock will be displayed on the screen and the microphone will blink 30 seconds before cutoff. Having said that, I would appeal to all speakers to please deliver their statements at a reasonable pace in order to facilitate interpretation into the 6 official languages. Thank you for your cooperation. I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of France, who will be followed by the distinguished representative of India and then Mexico. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Co-Chair. First of all, we wish to thank all of the panelists for the quality of their briefings. And you've all reminded us a truth that in road safety, no actor can succeed alone. Saving lives on the roads is a collective shared responsibility. French experience here is an illustration of this. Since 1992, we have reduced more than fivefold the amount of people killed on our roads, going from 18,000 per year to less than 3,000 today. And this is not the result of single measures, but a collective mobilization and governance that brings together all of the stakeholders. Since 1992, we decided to set up an interministerial committee on road safety because because road safety, of course, concerns transport but also health, education, labor, and justice. And this coordination is essential. It enables us to build coherent policies and to act simultaneously on infrastructure, behavior, prevention, checks, and also caring for victims. We've also chosen to fully onboard civil society within the National Council for Road Safety. Elected officials, victims associations, healthcare professionals, road managers, insurers, experts contribute to guide public decisions. We also hope to bring in companies and make them partners here. In France, more than 40% of road accidents concern commuting. Since 2000, we've had more than 4,000 workers involved protecting their employees and respecting the Charter for a Safer Road. Our experience has taught us one thing, and that's that road safety is certainly a public policy, but it is above all a project, a collective project for saving lives, because the different bodies, civil society, and the different stakeholders are making progress together and the results are up to the mark. And that's a conviction that I wanted to share with you and that I've been hearing about yesterday since I've been here listening to all of the different stakeholders who are mobilized on this, and I wish to thank you.

Thank you, Madam, for your statement. I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of India.

Please allow me to share 3 practical lessons from India's experience. First, road safety is a shared societal responsibility. Driven by leadership at national and local levels and coordinated across sectors, be it civil society, youth organizations, academia, communities, and the private sector, all have a valuable contribution to make. At the same time, awareness initiatives are most effective when they are adapted to local cultures, languages, and behavioral patterns, fostering genuine ownership within communities. Governments bear the primary responsibility for creating safer road systems, But success depends upon coordinated action across transport, health, education, finance, law enforcement, urban planning, and local authorities. Institutional coordination is therefore as important as infrastructure investment. Second, technology and data must drive policy. India is investing in digital governance tools such as the Integrated Road Accident Database and the Electronic Detailed Accident Report to improve crash analysis, identify high-risk locations, and strengthen evidence-based policymaking. Further, various databases such as vehicle drivers, road accident, crime reporting, healthcare system, etc., are also being integrated with each other for effective monitoring of road crashes and fatalities. Reliable national data systems enable countries to deploy resources where they have the greatest impact. Third, Safer roads require a balanced approach encompassing engineering, enforcement, education, and emergency care. Road safety audits, safer highways, enhanced safety in vehicles, improved accident healthcare networks, stronger enforcement, and sustained public awareness campaigns together produce better outcomes than isolated interventions. Looking ahead, international cooperation should focus on strengthening national capacities facilitating access to affordable technologies, and supporting knowledge sharing among countries. Developing countries should be enabled to implement nationally determined road safety strategies through predictable financing and capacity building without creating unnecessary reporting burdens or duplicative institutional structures. India hopes that the progress declaration we adopted yesterday will provide practical guidance for accelerating implementation during the remainder of the Decade of Action, strengthen international cooperation, and reaffirm that better governance, sustainable financing, and measurable implementation are the foundations of safer roads for all.

Thank you.

I thank the distinguished representative of India, and I give the floor now to the distinguished representative of Mexico.

Thank you very much, Madam Co-Chair, Mr. Co-Chair, panelists. Thank you for your contributions. For Mexico, the main lesson learned is that road safety can only progress when it is no longer seen as an exclusive responsibility of the transport sector and becomes a policy that brings together all levels of government and all sectors of society. With this conviction, in 2022, we established the National System of Mobility and Road Safety, the main mechanism for coordination between the federal government, the states, municipalities, academia, civil society, and the private sector in order to implement our national policy in this area. Through this mechanism, we have established a common agenda that is grounded in instruments like the National Strategy for Mobility and Road Safety. Specialized working groups and most recently the National Campaign for Road Safety that brings together concrete and measurable actions to ramp up compliance with the goal to reduce by half deaths and injuries due to transport accidents. Another important lesson learned has been recognizing the value of local experiences. Different Mexican cities have engaged in successful measures to manage speed, to strengthen safe infrastructure, to integrate active mobility in public transport, and improve data systems on accidents. Today, the challenge is to adapt and replicate these good practices across the national territory, respecting the different realities and institutional capacities of each state and municipality. Mexico is convinced that multi-sectoral coordination is not an end. Into itself, but rather a necessary condition to translate international commitments into concrete results that save lives. We reiterate our preparedness to continue to exchange experiences and strengthening international cooperation to build more safe, inclusive, and sustainable transport systems. Thank you very much.

Merci beaucoup.

Thank you very much to the distinguished representative of Mexico. I thank all of the speakers, and I now give the floor to the distinguished representative or an observer who seems to have requested the floor. UN-Habitat, please.

Excellencies, I'm honored to deliver this statement on behalf of UN-Habitat's Executive Director, Ms. Ana Claudia Rosbach. Road safety must be embedded across sectors, from urban planning and housing to climate action and human development. It is not only a transport issue but a cornerstone of sustainable and inclusive cities. Every day, millions leave their homes to access work, education, healthcare, and community life. The way we design our cities directly shapes how safely they can move. UN-Habitat's mandate on housing places mobility and proximity at the center of our vision. Compact, well-planned communities reduce the need for long, often dangerous commutes. and encourage people to walk, cycle, or use safe public transport. As we scale up commitments to halve road traffic deaths and injuries by 2030, UN-Habitat urges accelerated action on: Integrated planning. Cities must embrace participatory, gender-sensitive spatial planning that connects housing, transport services, and livelihoods. In practice, this requires the development of sustainable urban mobility plans. 2, inclusive street design. Safe sidewalks, bicycle lanes, efficient public transport, and traffic calming must be treated as core infrastructure and not optional amenities. And 3, road safety in informal settlements. Vulnerable communities face disproportionate risks due to poor infrastructure and mobility services. The recently launched SDG 11 Global Report shows that 4 in 10 urban residents still lack access to convenient public transport and sidewalks are missing or unsafe. We invite cities to join our Global Alliance of Cities for Road Safety, where they can benefit from capacity building, technical advice, catalytic action, and city-to-city City Exchange. We also emphasize the need for sustainable financing and commend the work of the UN Road Safety Fund and others advancing this cause. The Baku Call to Action, the outcome of the 13th World Urban Forum and the midterm review of the New Urban Agenda last week, highlighted the urgency of tackling global urbanization challenges and deepening housing crises and strategies to accelerate climate action. In this spirit, I reaffirm UN-Habitat's commitment to ensure that by 2030, fewer families lose loved ones to preventable road crashes and more people everywhere enjoy the dignity of safe, inclusive, and sustainable urban living. Thank you.

Merci beaucoup.

Thank you very much. After UN-Habitat, we have the International Association for Travel Safety. You have the floor. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm president of ASIRT, the Association for Safe International Road Travel, founded in response to the death of my 25-year-old son Aaron, who was killed along with 23 other passengers in a bus crash in Turkey. The bus driver, forced to drive overtime, was speeding down the wrong lane of a narrow, deteriorated 2-lane highway with no guardrail. The bus hit oncoming traffic, then plunged down a deep ravine, landing on its side. Emergency care, which could have saved some passengers, arrived on the scene too late. Aaron had been volunteering in a hospital abroad and was returning home to the U.S. to graduate from medical school and fulfill his dream of saving lives as a young doctor. The other passengers on the bus were people of all ages, and this is my point, many were Turkish citizens while many others were visitors from other countries. That bus and that road are symbols of our interconnectedness. Roads have become international. And our mission is important here because in a very real sense, we are one world, and one road, what we do in each of our individual countries, the decisions that we make, the actions that we take, have the power to affect not only our own citizens but people the world over. Like many of my civil society colleagues here today who have lost loved ones on the roads, a part of me remains forever in that time and in that place. We urge you to remain steadfast in your commitments and resolute in your actions so that the goal of reducing road deaths by 50% becomes a lived reality, challenging as it is, not an unrealized promise. Together, let us build a world where every journey ends with a safe return home. I would also like to highly recommend that the tourism industry Become an active member, an active stakeholder in our effort to save precious lives all over the world. Thank you.

Merci beaucoup.

Thank you very much, madam. I now give the floor to Serbia.

Thank you, co-chair. Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, strengthening multisectoral coordination has been one of the key lessons from Serbia's experience in improving road safety. We have recognized that road safety, as many colleagues said, is not the responsibility of a single institution or a single sector. It requires coordinated action, strong political commitment, and cooperation between all stakeholders. With this understanding, the Government of the Republic of Serbia established the National Road Safety Coordination Body in 2014, and in this decade it has strengthened its work. The coordination body brings together 7 ministries and the Road Traffic Safety Agency of the Republic of Serbia as an expert institution, and it is supporting the implementation of road safety policies and measures in our country. This mechanism has enabled us a whole-of-government approach connecting different sectors that directly influence road safety. Safety, including transport, enforcement, health, education, justice, and other relevant areas. However, effective coordination goes beyond government institutions. Serbia has built a broader partnership model involving universities and research institutions, the local self-governments, public health institutions, CSOs, international partners, and the private sector. We all do a lot of awareness-raising campaigns and activities together. This whole of society approach allows national policies to be translated into concrete actions at the local level. One of the key lessons from Serbia's experience is that coordination must be supported by reliable data and evidence-based decision-making. We have developed a national road safety database and a system for monitoring road safety indicators across all local self-government units. These tools allow us to identify risks, prioritize interventions, and measure progress. This coordinated approach has contributed to long-term improvements in road safety, but we recognize that continued efforts are needed to reach the ambitious targets set in our National Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan: reducing fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by 2030 and achieving Vision Zero for children. Our main lesson is clear: successful road safety governance requires strong institutions, cooperation between sectors, and decisions based on data and evidence. We believe that sharing experiences at international level, strengthening partnerships, and learning from each other are essential for accelerating progress towards safer roads worldwide. Thank you for your attention.

Merci beaucoup.

Thank you very much, Sabia. I now give the floor to the Dominican Republic. Thank you.

Buenos días.

Thank you, Mr. President. Very good morning and my regards to you, Your Excellency, and co-chair of this panel. Road safety in the Dominican Republic is one of our main public policy challenges, and this because the issue of road accidents has an impact on families, the health system, our productivity, and our country's face up to the figures that lead us to think a lot. We have had a lot of people killed in road accidents and more than 75% of them were motorcycle riders. When we look at the parallels compared to previous years, we've reached the conclusion that we're seeing a silent pandemic, a silent pandemic when we compare deaths to COVID, where a lot of people died. Road accidents have actually killed way more people than that. Currently, in the Dominican Republic, we are playing a We're leaders in our region in terms of road deaths, and we're not proud of that. However, I'd like to talk about some of the lessons learned in this process. Over the last 2 years, we have realized that there has been dispersion in our institutions. So what did we do to remedy that? Well, we understood that we had to build based on consensus. And right now, well, in 2024, A national priority. And from then, we started to build on a strategic road safety plan for 2025 to 2030, which involved a raft of consultations across the country. And it was a very participatory process where hundreds of people and more than 18 government agencies met in different fora and reached some important conclusions. One thing that we were concerned about that we've been able to resolve is the issue of the quality of the data on road accidents. And due to dispersion, we had statistics that didn't really enable us to adopt public policies to plan.

The speaker's microphone was cut off.

Thank you, says the Chair, and I now give the floor to Thailand.

Thank you, Co-Chairs, Excellencies, and distinguished delegates. It is a great honor for me to represent the Royal Thai Police at this high-level meeting on improving global road safety. Road traffic injuries remain one of the world's most challenging Every life lost on our roads is not only a personal tragedy but also a loss in family well-being. Therefore, every road user deserves to travel safely. As Thailand's national law enforcement agency, the Royal Thai Police plays a central role in promoting safer roads through effective enforcement Innovation and multi-sectoral collaboration. First, law enforcement. We focus on the major behavioral risk factor, including speeding, helmets, seat belts, and other behavior. Our objective is not only to enforce the law but also to encourage lasting behavioral change in road safety. Second, technology and data. Thailand continues to enforce the system through electronic ticketing, intelligence technology, and database. These two improve, improve transparency, increase operational efficiency, and support policymaking. Third, building partnership. The Royal Thai Police works closely with government agencies, schools, the private sector, and international partners to strengthen road safety education, promote public awareness, as well as encourage safer road user behavior. Thailand recognizes that road safety is an ongoing journey. We remain committed to improving enforcement, adopting technology, and sharing knowledge with the international community. Together, through partnership, innovation, we can save lives and build safer roads for our future generation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. I now give the floor to the International Partnership for Road Accident Victims, Mr. Starke O'Deadtú. Thank you, Chair.

As President of the International Road Victims Partnership and the Irish Road Victims Association, It is a real privilege to contribute to this discussion from both Ireland's experience and the perspective of victims, survivors, and bereaved families. Their experiences remind us that behind every statistic is a person, a family, and a community whose lives have been changed forever. Many countries have ambitious strategies and clear commitments. The real test is whether those commitments are translated into measurable reductions in deaths and serious injuries through effective governance, sustained investment, strong legislation, coordinated delivery, and accountability for delivery and outcomes. Ireland's experience has shown that road safety is not achieved through any single intervention. Over the last 2 decades, Ireland has strengthened its road safety framework through successive national road safety strategies, the establishment of the Road Safety Authority, the introduction of the penalty point system, mandatory alcohol testing legislation, the adoption of the Safe System Approach and Vision Zero, and improvements to driver education, including mandatory essential driver training for learner drivers. These reforms have formed part of a long-term approach to improving global— improving road safety. From Ireland's experience, I would highlight 3 lessons that may be relevant to countries represented here today. First, commitment must be matched by delivery. Road safety strategies on their own do not save lives. They must be translated into action through clear leadership, defined responsibilities, measurable targets, transparent reporting, regular evaluation, and sustained implementation. Second, accountability drives implementation. Progress is far more likely when responsibility for delivery is clearly assigned, performance is monitored, and outcomes are measured. And governments and agencies are accountable not only for their commitments but for the results they achieve. And third, the voice of victims and survivors strengthen better policy. Those most affected by road trauma should not simply be consulted, they should be recognised as partners in shaping policy, reviewing performance, and strengthening accountability. Victims, survivors, and bereaved families bring lived experience that helps identify system failures, improves decision-making, strengthens public trust, and keeps our collective—

Thank you very much to the Partnership for Road Victims. Thank you. Now we give the floor to Colombia. Thank you.

Buenos días, señora presidenta.

Very good morning, Madam Co-chair. Road safety is an essential component of sustainable development and contributes to us achieving the 2030 Agenda, especially by strengthening safe, accessible, and sustainable transport systems. Colombia promotes the development of safe road infrastructure that's accessible and resilient, designed in order to protect the lives of all road users, in particular pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and the most vulnerable users. To achieve this, we are engaging in measures that are grounded in technical information and evidence through road inspections and comprehensive designs that include the vulnerable users and measures geared towards fostering safe speeds that depend on each region and the users of the roads. Colombia, through the National Agency for Road Safety, has evaluated more than 25,000 kilometers of road. Through safety inspections in order to identify risks and engage in evidence-based infrastructure improvements. Colombia, through the National Agency for Road Safety, is implementing the Work Projects for Life program, prioritizing areas where we see particularly high levels of accidents. In our first stage, 124 areas in many different municipalities and 19 departments of our country, including over 26 million inhabitants, have seen interventions within the framework of the National Plan for Road Security 2022 to 2031. We have engaged in measures geared towards reducing speeds and protecting the most vulnerable users. Colombia has adopted a safe system approach under which infrastructure must anticipate the needs and risks of those who use the roads, prioritizing the protection of life through preventive interventions including management of infrastructure, management of speed, and behavior change. Colombia recognizes that developing safe road infrastructure requires effective coordination between the different levels of government, and the relevant institutions with a view to strengthening planning, implementation, and follow-up of the interventions to respond to the— depending on the needs and capacities of each region. We have provided over 100 technical interventions in many different areas strengthening regional plans for road safety. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Colombia. I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Spain.

Buenos días.

A very good morning. Saving lives is the essence and the bedrock of our civilization. Traffic accidents are a failure of civilization. It's as simple as that. In order to implement a public policy, any type of public policy, the first thing we need to do is show concern for having institutionality and organizations that are up to the mark to engage in these policies. Otherwise, our plans and policies won't work.

Thank you.

We need something that requires regulatory action, capacity for coordination, and the capacity to establish goals for transit police. Okay? Financing is key also because the success of these initiatives can be measured by the budgets that are allocated to them. Another basic issue for governance is, first of all, having a commission for road safety in the National Assembly in order to onboard all stakeholders in our national road safety policy. We require a specialist prosecutor's office for crimes against road safety in order to incorporate the Ministry of Justice in road safety policy and also a superior council for road safety where all stakeholders, all actors are represented. Spain's experience shows that how we enforce traffic law, this is the most effective way of reducing accidents and the worst consequences of them. Period. So monitoring, control, and punishment. And violations need to be charged. People need to pay for violating the rules. Traffic police is extremely important, fundamental actually. And our experience shows that without traffic police, we won't achieve any results in road safety. It's as simple as that, honestly. Traffic police, technology, speed cameras, drones, all of that is very important also in order to ensure that the law is complied with. And making sure that we don't disperse it too much, we just need to focus our efforts on helmets, using— the use of seat belts, speed. Distractions, that's all. Vigilance, checks, and punishment for violations. The speaker's microphone was cut off.

I'd like to thank Spain for that statement. I now give the floor to the representative of the Cairos Project, stakeholder 1. Thank you.

Distinguished delegates and esteemed colleagues, in the Philippines, our volunteer NGO created Project Cares RS10P, the Coalition of Advocates for Roads, Environment, and Safety, now on its second decade, still thriving even without external funding. Because we unite leaders and partners in meaningful, collaborative, self-regulating, volunteer-driven programs, generally pro bono. We mobilize YES for RTSIP involving youths, educators, and safety advocates who bring road traffic safety and injury prevention programs to their own schools, their own organizations, down to their own grassroots communities. And we benchmark RTSIP apps, meaning Road Traffic Safety and Injury Prevention Action Plans, programs, and systems that we consider as the ultimate, most effective, comprehensive solution to end road traffic crash deaths and mitigate disasters. It is anchored on the safe systems approach of the Global Plan. For instance, in Barangay Lopez Haina, Sagay City, Province of Negros Occidental. The RTSIP APSWI benchmark is delivering results such as zero road crash death in what was once considered a killer highway curve. City ordinance for mandatory helmet use now enforced at the barangay level. Barangay Lopez Haina workers are updating data on riders' licenses and road crash statistics per household and our Safe 6 for zero campaigns are now integrated in sectoral grassroots gatherings. Since RTSIP-Apps was launched, Barangay Lopez Haina has experienced what the community now calls road peace, proving that when communities own the Global Plan, zero deaths is not a dream, it is reality. Collective efforts show that the UN Global Plan can be localized and sustained Road safety must therefore be institutionalized as a permanent commitment of the local government. We admire Sweden's Vision Zero and Vietnam's helmet vaccine, yet our own journey can inspire LMICs because even without funding, lives are saved because communities, governments, and advocates unite. The question is not whether we can, but whether we will act together urgently, united, and accountable. Thank you.

Merci.

Thank you. Thank you to the representative of the Kairos Project. I now give the floor to the representative Falconi, thank you.

Good morning, honorable authorities and distinguished colleagues. My name is André Collin and I represent Falconi, a management consultancy from Brazil which has implemented the management method in road safety for more than 12 years. Our perspective is that halving the number of deaths in road safety— in road traffic is not an aspiration, it is an achievable outcome through partnerships between private sector, public authorities, academia, and specialists, reductions of more than 30% of deaths have been achieved in the initial years of our activities. Employing management practices aligned to the Safe System Approach, consistent data analytics, evidence-based interventions, and government leadership, Road Safe projects in Brazil and other developing countries made this a reality. No specific innovation was developed or extraordinary investment dedicated. It was a result of well-established programs and close local support. Combining political will, thorough assessment of risk factors, and efficient execution of evidence-based interventions, the expected results were achieved and sustained through consistent government routines. Each challenge is different. That is why we believe through knowledge dissemination, technical resources availability, and local leadership, we can improve road safety worldwide. In some cases, what might be considered intuitive or simple can produce remarkable results in road safety when consistently implemented. Thank you.

Merci.

Thank you to the representative of Falcone. We now give the floor to the, the representative Of the— to Mr. Sick? To Stakeholder 1, representative of Together for Roads.

Good afternoon, distinguished delegates. My name is Peter Goldwasser, and I serve as the Executive Director of Together for Safer Roads, a global NGO committed to saving lives and preventing serious injuries by strengthening fleet safety worldwide. As we reach the midpoint of the second decade of action for road safety, we know that commitments are essential, but progress ultimately depends on what happens after those commitments are made. How are they implemented? How outcomes are measured? And how institutions hold themselves accountable for results? That requires a true whole-of-society response, one in which governments lead but where private industry and civil society also play meaningful, sustained roles. Because the reality is that road safety is deeply connected to how the global economy functions every day. Roughly one-third of road traffic deaths worldwide are linked to occupational activity. In the United States, transportation incidents remain the leading cause of workplace fatalities. The breadth of that exposure is a challenge, but it is also an opportunity. The private sector operates at extraordinary scale. Every day, companies make decisions about the vehicles they purchase, the technologies they deploy, the drivers they train, the standards they establish, and the expectations they set across global supply chains. Commercial fleets are one of the clearest examples of that potential. When safety practices improve across major fleets, the impact can extend across hundreds of thousands of vehicles and drivers at once. When companies pilot and validate new technologies in real-world operations, they generate the evidence needed for broader adoption. When companies measure and report on safety performance, they create greater transparency and accountability around whether commitments are actually producing results. And when industries align around stronger operational standards, safer practices can scale across entire markets. I am pleased to share 2 examples of what this can look like in practice. Yesterday, Together for Safer Roads, along with Autoliv, UPS, and AB InBev, launched Every Seat Every Time, a new global seat belt safety initiative designed to help commercial fleets turn a basic safety commitment into consistent practice across their operations. With the goal of reaching 500 fleets in 10 countries by 2030. We have also recently launched a new work focused on tire safety, with Amazon and other TSR members bringing together fleets and key stakeholders to develop practical guidance that can help strengthen tire safety management and accelerate the adoption of proven practices across commercial fleet sector. These are 2 different issues, but they reflect the same underlying principle: the private sector's greatest contribution to this decade may not be any single initiative, but rather it may be the speed and scale at which safety norms can shift when major institutions move together and when commitments are translated into measurable action. Organizations like Together for Safe Roads can help make that possible by bringing institutions together, aligning incentives, and helping turn individual commitments into collective action that can drive broader change. The opportunity before us is significant, Thank you very much.

Merci.

Thank you very much to Stakeholder 1, Together for Safer Transport. This means we've heard the last speaker in the interactive segment. I will now pass the floor to my co-chair, His Excellency Sheikh Rabiu Al Alam, thank you.

Thank you, my fellow co-chair. I now give the floor to the distinguished panelists to respond to the comments and answer for final comments. I now give the floor to Ms. Reteina Molossian, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Thank you. Let me start by the story of Erin, a son that was lost in a road crash in a country that was far away from his own. and being well and healthy and still having a long life ahead of him. And thank you very much for sharing this story with us. And it's important to really see people behind the data that we are discussing. And I'm always very moved and saddened when we hear these stories, most of all when we understand that it could have been prevented or that many lives might have been still saved. And it reinforces the message that many of you have called from in your interventions, from the very first ones, France, Mexico, Dominican Republic, everyone called for partnerships. Because the country that we speak about has very clear rules from 2001 about driving times for professional drivers involved in driving either goods or passengers. But the healthcare system, the private sector, the law enforcement, the— all of us, we all have failed Erin. So, the idea, if we don't work together, it won't happen. And we do have the solutions. That's what amazes me. What we are lacking is an upscale approach and the need to be more concrete. Some of you mentioned data. Yes, that is very important. Technology.

Yes.

could be a solution. I think a colleague from the panel have mentioned this, and we should use this more extensively. The Safe System Approach and the goal of Vision Zero really remains also our guiding principles. Humans make mistakes. The system must be designed so that our mistakes do not kill. And we cannot limit ourselves to our own country, to a very narrow vision. We have to understand that in an interconnected world that we all live today, we have to make sure that it's not only here now that we have to be safe. We have to ensure that every country, with a particular focus on middle and low-income countries, have strong rules that will keep all of us safe. And we have a very good solution to that. The UN Road Safety Fund is essential to turn this vision into concrete action. The Special Envoy, the UN Road Safety Fund is there, together with more than 20 UN agencies, to help support the countries to implement this partnership and to move the needle in the right direction. Thank you.

I thank Ms. Bettina Mlucian. I now give the floor to Mr. George Smith. Chief Executive Officer of International The Road Assignment Program.

Thank you, Co-Chair, and thank you all delegates for sharing your experiences and work to date. I think globally we have momentum in road safety. This week the WHO reported that globally road deaths are down by 9%. That's the second time now that we've seen a reduction in the status reporting from the WHO. 20 years ago, we were going in the opposite direction. Even 10 years ago, we were. But we're turning around now, and that is something to be celebrated. It's not easy. It's taken considerable work by all countries around the world to get to the point that we're at now. But we need to build on that momentum. A very common theme from all the speakers has been the importance of collaboration and partnership. Every country has taken their own pathway to get to where they are at the moment, and they're finding their own methods and own approaches that suit their situation best. But very commonly across all countries, following the evidence and working in cooperation is something that has been shown to work very effectively. With respect to roads, we know that every time you improve the state rating of a road, you halve the crash cost on that road. Moving a road from 1-star to 2-star halves the crash costs. If we were able to get most travel happening around the world on roads rated 3 stars or better, we would see road deaths and injuries reduced by 30% right away. There would be $8 of economic benefits for each $1 invested. It's a very strong investment case for improving infrastructure and safe speeds. We also know that safe road environments are very sustainable. When people feel that an environment is safe, they're more likely to feel comfortable walking and cycling and using public transport, and that's going to be an essential element in ensuring that we really reduce road deaths rapidly. ensuring that people have the choice to take the very safest mode they can when they're moving around our increasingly growing cities. So again, IRAP is here to work with you all and looks forward to the opportunity to contributing in the following years. Thank you.

I thank Mr. George Smith. I now give the floor to Ms. Sanaya Al-Kaswani, Youth Representative Forum, Youth for Road Safety.

Thank you very much, Your Excellency. Excellencies, if there is one message that I hope we leave with today, it is that despite our different experiences, despite our different roles and perspectives, we have all reached the same conclusion that Road safety is a collective responsibility. It's a shared societal value. We have heard from governments about all the work that they're doing with technology, with data, with enforcement. We have heard from academia. We've heard about projects. We've heard from private sector. But most importantly, we heard also the voice of victims and survivors. And this reminds us that every life lost leaves an empty seat on a family table and an unfinished dream, like the story of Aaron. And this responsibility belongs to all of us. It all comes to the loss of human life. And if it's true that responsibility is shared, then accountability must also be collective. We should not only look at measuring what we have done so far, because it's clearly not enough. We need to be more ambitious. We need to trust more in partnerships. We need to empower local communities, youth, and resource them to help build this accountability. As young people, we do not want to inherit this system because it's clearly not functioning. It's killing our peers every single day, but we want to help build a better system starting today. We do not claim to have all the answers, but I can assure you that we have different questions that we can ask. We can see the different realities, and we can bring the communities closer to the decision makers and to the processes that shape the future of the transport system. I would say that the greatest investment that we can make in the remaining years of this decade is not only in roads or vehicles or technology, it is in people, and it starts with young people. Please, I urge you to invest in our skills, invest in youth leadership, invest in our ability to turn commitments into action, and build systems where young people are not only invited to witness the accountability but actually empowered to strengthen it. The success of this decade of action will not be measured by the promises we will make in this room, but by the number of journeys that become safer because we chose to build that future together.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sanaya Al-Qaswani. I now give the floor to Ms. Sarah Rots. Vice President of IMAGINE.

Thank you, Mr. Co-Chair. I applaud the delegates for your inspiring passion for road safety. We heard from countries, NGOs, and several nonprofits this morning. It is an interesting conversation, and it's important to note that safety is our top priority and the core of everything we do at Amazon. We believe road incidents are truly preventable. One incident is one too many, and every victim of a road safety incident represents someone's mother, father, son, daughter, sibling, or friend. Our vision at Amazon is to become the global benchmark for safety excellence. excellence within the industries in which we operate. Being better than average is not good enough, and we want to set a new standard for road safety, not just for Amazon but for all road users. And we are encouraged by the progress, but we know that there's still much work to be done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have— we have heard the last speaker in this panel discussion. I would like to thank the panelists and all the participants for their active engagement in Panel Discussion 1. Before concluding, members are reminded that Panel Discussion 2 will take The next panel discussion will take place immediately after the conclusion of this panel discussion. I invite the co-chairs and panelists of Panel Discussion 2 to take their seats and at the podium. Members are requested to remain seated for the podium change. Panel Discussion 1 is now concluded.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Excellent.

I call to order the 2nd multi-stakeholder panel of the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on improving Thank you. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, this panel will address the theme, Whole-of-Government and Whole-of-Society Action for Sustainable Financing and Enhanced Capacity. Let me take this opportunity to warmly welcome all of you. I'm honored to serve as your co-chair together with Director General of the National Road Safety Agency, Mr. Benacer Boulaajoul. A summary of our discussion will be presented at the closing segment at 5:30 PM today in the General Assembly Hall. I will now deliver some opening remarks in my capacity as co-chair of this panel. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues, the Progress Declaration recognizes that road safety must be financed as a core public responsibility with adequate and sustained resources commensurate with the scale of the problem. It calls for road safety to be integrated into public finance, transport, and infrastructure investment decisions, including planning, appraisal, and budgeting. And for all infrastructure investments to meet the minimum safety standards throughout the project lifecycle. Road safety should not be treated only as a standalone program. It should also be integrated into investments in health, climate, urban development, and sustainable transport so that public spending contributes both to safer mobility and to wider sustainable development. Thank you. Development objectives. But financing alone is not enough. Resources must be connected to institutional authority, professional capacity, implementation, and measurable safety outcomes. Too often, success is measured by whether funds were disbursed, activities completed, or kilometres of roads constructed. The real test is whether investments reduce exposure to fatal and serious injury risk and contribute to fewer deaths and serious injuries. This panel will therefore consider how domestic budgets, development finance, private and philanthropic resources, and capacity building can be aligned around evidence-based interventions and accountable delivery. I now give the floor to my fellow co-chair, Mr. Benacer Belhajoul, Director General of the National Road Safety Agency.

Thank you, Honourable Minister, Excellencies, distinguished delegates. It's my pleasure and my honour to co-chair this panel, and I will start by some introductory remarks. Governments have the primary responsibility for road safety, but lasting progress requires action across the whole of society. The Progress Declaration recognizes important roles for health institutions, local governments, development partners, civil society, academia, youth, philanthropic organizations, and the private sector. These contributions must extend beyond advocacy. Health systems can strengthen data, prevention, trauma care, and rehabilitation. Universities can build national evidence and professional capacity. Companies can improve safety across their fleets, procurement, supply chain, and transport services. Civil society and young people can bring lived experience into decision-making, support implementation, monitor commitments, and demand accountability for results. The Declaration also places road safety firmly within the wider Sustainable Development Agenda. Safe walking and cycling, safe and accessible public transport, appropriate speeds and safe infrastructure contribute not only to fewer deaths and serious injuries, but also to public health, equity, social inclusion, climate action, environmental sustainability, and economic development. The central question for this panel is therefore, how can financing, capacity, and the contributions of different actors be brought together under clear government leadership and accountability to deliver measurable progress before 2030 and wider gains for sustainable development and human well-being? So now we will move to the presentation by the panelists. We shall first hear a presentation by the panelists and thereafter the floor will be open to comments, observation, and question. As there is no established list of speakers, delegations wishing to speak after the presentation by the panelists are requested to press the microphone button starting now. Representatives of accredited stakeholders wishing to make a statement are requested to approach the representative of the Secretariat on the side of the gallery. Just to remind that the limit— the time is fixed to 5 minutes for each panelist. We have some experts from different sectors here in this panel, and we have Mrs. Juggner, Program Lead of Injury at George Institute of International Health. Welcome. We have also Mrs. Awa Saar, President of Lazard International. We have also Mr. Jordi Lambert, Vice President of Autoliv, and the last not the least, Mr. Benedikt Eschbergen, World Bank Practice Manager of Transports. And now we start by the first speaker, Mrs. Jagannath. The floor is yours.

Thank you. Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, good morning. Road safety is often treated as a transport issue, but when a crash causes harm, The injuries, the disability, the grief, that is a human experience and that is a health issue. Health ministries are often brought in only after the harm has occurred. Infrastructure commitments win elections. Prevention commitments go unnoticed. Every day, trauma teams deal with choices made long before a patient arrives. How a road was designed, whether a helmet was worn, how fast an ambulance reached the scene. Health ministries didn't make those choices, but they best understand what happens when those choices go wrong. That is why health ministries must move from managing the consequences of road crashes to becoming empowered partners in preventing them through 3 essential roles. First and foremost, data. We have heard a fair bit about it in the previous panel. Not estimates, not guesstimates, data that holds us accountable so that no one is left behind. Making the burden visible isn't a health ministry's role alone. It needs a whole-of-government approach. Health records, police, transport, and insurance crash data each captures only part of the picture. Without linking them, those most at risk disappear from both the data and the policies built to protect them. This is exactly why progress looks uneven. Since 2011, global road deaths have fallen by 20%, 21%, but the Americas and the African region stall far behind. A 21% drop looks like success in the right region. In the wrong one, that is still 85 countries, it looks like nothing changed or perhaps got worse. So when you talk about progress, we should also think progress for whom? My second point is around equity, equity-driven, contextually relevant research. As an academic, I cannot emphasize this enough. Countries should identify their own research priorities backed by national funding and co-designed with implementing partners and communities so evidence informs interventions, policies, and legislations that fit local context. Some interventions are, of course, universal. Like speed limits. But for many, or for most vulnerable road users like children riding motorized two-wheelers, pedestrians, e-scooter riders, the context-relevant answers are still absent. This includes the gig economy. Delivery riders and ride-hailing drivers often work under tight deadlines with limited protection and insurance. Road safety for them is also occupational safety, and the declaration calls on business reliant on road transport to make it central to their operations. Third and lastly, accessible trauma care. Prevention remains the goal, but when crashes occur, timely, affordable care can mean the difference between recovery, disability, and death. Health ministries must strengthen care from the crash scene to recovery, especially in rural areas where distance can turn a survivable injury into tragedy. This brings me to financing. It was encouraging to hear from the Indian delegation earlier in the panel. and its ongoing commitment to a 50% reduction in road deaths and the pathway to achieve it. However, road crashes continue to cost countries, particularly such as India, 3 to 5% of its GDP annually, with health spending still below 2%. The gains of universal health coverage are lost here. More than 30% of households face catastrophic health expenditure after a crash. We fund prevention as a short-term project, and expect health systems to carry on the long-term consequences, that logic is backwards. The question isn't whether we can afford road safety, but whether we can keep affording its absence. None of this happens without a whole-of-society commitment, as is also reflected in this panel today, with participation from civil society, the World Bank, and private sector partners. In closing, families don't experience progress as a percentage. They experience it as whether their child comes home. This declaration is not the achievement, it's a vehicle, and vehicles only matter if they take us somewhere. It calls for a national lead agency with the lead authority to coordinate road safety across governments, one that is adequately funded, empowered to lead, and inclusive of the health sector. Health ministries don't need more responsibility. They need a seat when transport and urban development decisions are being made, not a call afterwards to treat the consequences. They need governance that gives them the power to prevent, not just manage. Because the alternative is simple: we keep meeting in rooms like this, counting the same 92%, while the road decides who gets to come home. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mrs. Zegnor, for your deep analysis and all proposals you came with to improve regarding the current, I mean, declaration. And we can discuss this after, maybe when we finish the presentation for all speakers. And now we will move to Mrs. Awasar, President of LASER International. Awa, the floor is yours.

Merci, Président. Excellent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Excellencies, distinguished colleagues. Today I'm going to talk to you about West African civil society, which is a driver of accountability as we're moving from commitments We've been taking action for 27 years now in Senegal, West Africa, all over the world, as well as North Africa. We started our work in 1988. We've had a number of regional forums since then, safety assessments, infrastructural assessments at the road level, at the school level. And over these 27 years of continuous assessment on the ground, we've also worked with institutions. We're particularly committed to working with vulnerable segments of society because every child who is killed or injured on the roads affects the development of our country, our continent, the entire world, and it has implications far beyond the family drama it results in. Now, institutionalization implies a number of milestones and we've hit those milestones. I'm on both sides, in fact. I represent civil society but I've also worked for the Adyarut Institution for 17 years. So, in 2011, Senegal made a commitment to a decade of action. That was our first round of advocacy work. We want a school environment that's safe, to create that with various partners. That was our goal. And starting in 2017, we made a commitment to 30 kilometers an hour, a special lane. This was a partnership signed with the parliament, with the Ministry of Transport. And in 2023, 2024, The African Road Safety Charter was signed. So these are some of the milestones we've hit as a civil society organization. And we've always used the same method across the various campaigns we've waged. The most important campaign is the school zone campaign, 30 kilometers per hour around school— around schools, but also the African Road Safety Charter, which throws up extraordinary prospects, not just for Senegal, but various countries on the continent, and this through the African Union. How did we achieve this 30-kilometer target? We waged a campaign, raised awareness. We set up a global alliance for road safety. Shout out to them. We also worked a lot with parliamentarians. We did a lot of advocacy. to get the job done. This shows how much civil society can achieve. Also, the Ministry of Transport has been intervening since 2021 to get the Road Safety Charter signed. The UN Special Envoy— we managed to get the envoy to come to Senegal to meet with our authorities. Also, the Special Envoy of the United Nations, His Excellency the Envoy for Road Safety, visited Senegal, and that resulted in the June 2023 ratification of the African Road Safety Charter. We are a lever, if you will, for this advocacy work, which is successful, but what we need for that is convincing data, assessments of infrastructure of roads. For instance, the star rating for schools, UN-led projects. We also need to build robust coalitions such as the Francophone Alliance for Road Safety. Nazir, the Director General, is here with us. Nazir, the Ministry of Transport, and the Global Alliance, I think I mentioned that.

Yes.

We need a long-term commitment, and that's what we did. 27 years on the ground working hand in hand with our partners. This is something that must be built, built across mandates, not just through one campaign. And this is something we've been doing all the way to the highest level, the head of state level, although it's something that began at the local, at the grassroots level, and that went through all the way to the Senegalese presidency and now here in this hall at the United Nations in the forum tasked with ensuring road safety. We need accountability. It's our duty. We need to produce independent data. We've counted, we've analyzed, we published including the data, the figures. We have roughly 850,000 deaths in Senegal, although the figures are probably higher, and the Director-General will confirm that. We've been ensuring that victim voices are heard, and we've been following up. We haven't just been making loud pronouncements. We've been taking on commitments to ensure that there are laws, that there's funding, that all of this is translated into measurable action on the ground. Measurable effects on the ground. Measurability is very important. But we've also established a link between the local and the global to ensure that experience from national and regional fora— because we've also been working with Nigeria, with Morocco, Cameroon, all of those countries, and we hope that we'll be able to work with other countries as well. And we're doing that here today at the United Nations. What we ask of this assembly today is to listen to our advocacy. What we need is to institutionalize a place for civil society in national road safety governance mechanisms, going beyond one-off consultations which are sometimes held. We also want sustainable funding and independent monitoring spearheaded by local NGOs, just like infrastructural projects. which are funded by large donors. We also want to scale up tools that work, whether that be rating for schools— there are others— so that they can be disseminated in countries where they're not yet in use. We also want support for multi-year partnerships with grassroots organizations like ours, going beyond 2-, 3-year projects, which are quite disruptive for us. So the last thing I'd like to ask from you is quite brief. To translate our commitments together, our commitments which yesterday the UN Secretary-General recalled, as well as the Special Envoy for Road Safety, they recalled them. Our commitments should be translated into lasting safe mobility for future generations. I thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Awa, who is a great advocate for road safety internationally, but especially in Africa. You underscored, unfortunately, how many road accidents we have, but also you referred to actions and initiatives that are engaged in through your association. The 30 kilometers an hour limit, advocacy for the African Charter. For road safety in schools and also the production of independent data. You finished by launching an appeal to government institutions and international organizations for more commitment. And we will be discussing this more at the end of our panel after the questions and the comments from participants.

Vice President of Autoliv, The floor is yours, please.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us here. I'm from Autoliv. As maybe some of you don't know the company, we are leaders on safety products like airbags, seatbelts, and all this stuff that we are discussing these days. And coming to this panel, I was asked, What do you think, you know, knowing that many of the technology already exist— seatbelts exist since many years ago— what are the factors that are more important, how you balance them? And I was suggested, what is more important, regulation, consumer information, procurement, how the big companies subcontract or buy automobiles, or the industry need? And honestly, that was very difficult because it's like choosing between the right and the left arm. All these factors are critical. I will start with regulation. If there would not exist a regulation to put seatbelts on the cars, there would be no seatbelts on the cars today. The fact that this is regulated and this is mandatory, today the industry produces about 500 million seatbelts every year. And I always joke because as a supplier of the big OEMs always source to the lowest bidder. So as you can imagine, the cost of a full functional seatbelt on the front is cheaper today than a McDonald's hamburger. So when we have this stigma that this is expensive, in the context of a car, basic technology is very cheap, I will say, thanks to this volume of scale. So when we have these regulations, this helps to bring the volumes. When the volumes are here is when the cost goes down, because either it's going to go to companies like Autoliv or somebody more competitive in the market is the one who will get the part. Consumers, super important, because for example, you see today in Europe one of the biggest drivers of content on safety is the NCAP rating, which means that the final user has a desire to buy safer cars. But these kind of NCAPs are being adopted progressively everywhere, and now the good news is that also we are considering in this segment to score commercial vehicles and in the future probably motorcycles, where still a lot of work to do. Procurement. I mean, we have seen in the previous panel that companies like Amazon, they have thousands of vehicles circulating by our roads. The example that they provide is they put some requirements when you buy those cars, can be, you know, kind of minimum 3, 4 stars or whatever is decided, but this generates a demand of safety for commercial vehicles. And then industry, I think that the industry, especially in emerging or in low-middle-income countries is relevant. It's relevant because the volume— many companies produce in those countries. So if the procurement, the logistics will require some level of safety, this can be an example to start bringing these solutions to the final user. I want to bring an example here for us in Autoliv. In Autoliv, we realize— and again, as I said, safety company— we are now focusing on outside of the car. We realize that there is a lot of people getting injured outside of the car. So we are working on vulnerable road users and motorcycle safety as one of the focus for the future. And we realize that the seat belt of the motorcycle is the helmet. But they don't have the situation like we have in cars, where basically you buy a car anywhere in the world and they'll have seatbelts today. There is a proposal I heard these days to— what if when you buy a motorcycle it came with 2 helmets? That would be fantastic, right? But until we achieve that point, we decided that in countries like Thailand where people go to work in motorcycles, we are providing helmets as safety equipment for these guys. And now we are going to continue with other countries. It's not fixing the problem, but we lead an example here, and I think that big corporations have the capacity to influence sister companies around the area, and our dream— imagine for a moment that many companies will have this initiative, and basically you can create this awareness why it's important, why the company provides a helmet, and then you can go with the communication, the information, that people get the understanding why it's so important to use a helmet. So maybe this is an island, but with productivity and if this will be contagious to other companies, probably we will— we could do a good deployment of these safety elements. I think that the leadership on safety, as I said before, is not a question of if the cars have more or less technology. It's the complete system. Regulations— we can put all the seatbelts that you want on the cars, but today the global use of seatbelts globally, numbers are around 50%. We have statistics that if people will use them better— if they will use them, not better, just use them— our numbers show that about 150,000 deaths will be avoided. Thank you.

annually.

And this is something that exists, we just need to apply. In the previous interventions, I heard that one of the best practices is to make sure also that not only mandate that they have to be there, is the reinforcement, is the— if you don't use it, what happens? And then is when tickets or the police has a big important role here. So, summarizing, I think that the industry that I represent today here, not only because we develop safety products but because we have an industry with more than 70,000 employees and factories around the world, we can lead by example providing these safety elements and the culture around it to start being the first kind of germ to see if this can be contagious. So living with this proactive and I think optimistic hope that we can be all part of the solution, I finish here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jordi, by this hope and to be optimistic. You finish your speech by maybe calling for to be optimistic and to be optimistic for the future. And you raise one important issue is about the involvement of the private sector to improve road safety, which is very, very important. And you talk also about new technology, how can new technologies or maybe gadgets can improve the situation, the safety inside the car. And maybe another question can be raised and we can discuss it later is about the affordability. and the accessibility of this technology, mainly in some maybe country from the south, maybe because the coast, as you mentioned, the coast is very important for the car. And if we can be sure that each car maybe can— is equipped with necessary safety equipment, I think we can save more lives, as you mentioned. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And now we will move to the last speaker, Mr. Benedict Iserbergen from World Bank. Welcome, and the floor is yours.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all. I would like to recognize first Excellency himself, Minister Kayyoub's leadership in hosting the 4th Global Ministerial Conference in Marrakesh in February 2025, where sustainable road safety financing was defined as the thematic focus. So thank you for leading that exercise. And this discussion is a direct continuation of that discussion and conversation and the commitments captured in the Marrakesh Declaration. So very much appreciated, that effort and your leadership. So financing gap is the central constraint. Road safety remains chronically underfunded. Closing the gap between current investment flows and what is required to have facilities by 2030 requires an additional $400 billion over 10 years. And our financing and our colleagues of the multilateral development banks' financing now exceeding— is now exceeding $6 billion collectively since 2018, which— with projections to reach $10 billion over the next decade. It is, of course, significant, but it's falling short, of course. The call to integrate road safety into public finance is operationally meaningful only if governments redesign their national and subnational programs, so budget structures, the use of private engagements, and national strategies accordingly. So what's the bank, the World Bank, doing at scale and its platform? So we have been using our Global Road Safety Facility and the World Bank has leveraged more than $5 billion in dedicated road safety financing since 2010. And in fiscal year '25, we think we influenced $945 million, close to a billion, in road safety applications within a $7 billion transport lending envelope, both figures representing historic highs, so we're very proud of that. This was achieved through our Global Road Safety Facility technical catalytical role, a relatively small donor-funded facility that consistently multiplies its grant resources in large-scale lending operations. So we would like to see a shift, a shift from road safety investments towards outcome-oriented and result-based financing. Let me go into that and see how you react to this. Conventional infrastructure lending disperses against physical output, as you know, kilometres built, safety interventions completed, but our Programme for Results, P4R we call them, and And similar outcome-oriented financing disburses against verified outcomes: reduction in fatalities, road safety audit compliance, speed enforcement rates, child restraint usage, and many more. So these are output-based, outcome-based results. So Programme for Results and other result-based investment instruments offered by the World Bank and other MDBs are particularly well-suited to support the implementation and institutional strengthening actions identified through road safety management reviews. These instruments enable financing to be aligned with the government programs and systems while supporting improvements in governance arrangements, interagency coordination, and institutional performance. Program-for-Results operations where disbursements are linked to to the achievement of agreed disbursement-linked performance indicators can strengthen institutional incentives, improve implementation, and support sustainable results by reinforcing government ownership, accountability, and capacity development. One design feature is very, very critical. These programmes depend on government programmes dedicated to road safety. It should be noted, while governments in many of our countries where we operate allocate budget for safety, for ad hoc safety interventions, a holistic standalone mission-driven program is still rather rare. A national road safety strategy, a dedicated institutional structure, or a costed investment plan must be in place for the instrument to engage, to be used. So our operational experience at the World Bank. The World Bank has deployed these result-based financing instruments in practice, and I will give you an example of that. A standalone road safety P4R operation in India was developed jointly with the ADB, the Asian Development Bank, a model of NDB co-financing structured entirely around disbursement-linked safety performance indicators. This operation demonstrated that result-based instruments can be designed creatively to incorporate private sector participation. For instance, in India, Road Safety P4R, the Programme for Results, vehicle inspection and certification centres were a defined results area, creating a direct link between the private sector service delivery, inspection infrastructure and operations, and government-owned safety performance outcomes. This model is replicable. and can be scaled up. Governments with a regulatory mandate for periodic vehicle inspection but limited public implementation capacity can use a results-based framework to engage private operators while retaining public accountability for outcomes. So beyond project-level structures, governments with results-based road safety programs in place are way better positioned to access the sustainable finance market— also an issue I would like to highlight here— issuing social or sustainability-linked bonds backed by the same outcome frameworks that underpin the multi-development bank financing. This creates a reinforcing architecture. Public programmes anchor private capital and MDB results-based lending provides the credibility and verification infrastructure that private investors require. So let me conclude with the following, a call to action. The financing framework exists. Every country should have a national road safety strategy with an investment plan, costed, time-bound, and owned by the finance ministry. By the finance ministry. I repeat, as much as by the transport ministry. Having a robust investable programme on safety is a prerequisite to attract necessary financing and particularly innovative finance funding streams. Road safety outcomes must be embedded in capital budgets and infrastructure investment decisions and not treated as a sectoral afterthought. Finance ministers, again, need to be in this conversation, not just transport ministries or ministers. Countries should act on the Marrakesh Declaration, establish dedicated budget lines, build the institutional structures that can track and verify performance, and engage the private sector as a partner in delivering safety-critical services. The World Bank and its Global Road Safety Facility stand committed to support countries that are ready to take that step. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. I'm sorry to talk so much about finance.

Thank you, Mr. Benedict, for your intervention, and I think you raise one very important issue that financing is still and remains a big issue for all countries and mainly in developing countries. You raise also, or you mention also, all the effort on technical assistance made by the World Bank, and we thank you, thank to the World Bank for all your effort, and we had the experience maybe to benefit from some technical assistance and from some support, mainly technical assistance studies, but also the finance framework you mentioned is very important, and I think it could be very important to have a strategy, but if we don't have this financial— I think it remains just some ideas, which is good, but it's not enough maybe to create the added value in road safety. So maybe we can discuss— we can have more discussion about this topic.

Thank you.

Maybe after when we open the stage. And now I will give the floor to His Excellency, Honorable Minister of Kyrgyzstan. The floor is yours.

Thank you.

Thank you. I now open the floor for comments and questions. I'd like to remind delegations that there is no pre-established list of speakers. Participants wishing to take the floor are invited to press the microphone button. In giving the floor, member states will be interspersed with representatives of observers, United Nations system entities, and stakeholders. Delegations are also reminded that the time limit for interventions will be 3 minutes for individual statements and 5 minutes for statements on behalf of groups, which will be strictly enforced by means of automatic microphone cutoff. To assist delegations in managing their time, a countdown clock will be displayed on the screen and the microphone will blink 30 seconds before cutoff. Having said this, I'd appeal to all speakers to deliver their statements at a reasonable pace to facilitate interpretation into the 6 official languages. I thank you for your cooperation. I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Dominican Republic, followed by Senegal and Spain. Distinguished representative of Dominican Republic, the floor is yours.

Saludos, Excellencies. Regards, Excellencies, co-chairs of this panel. Undoubtedly, without resources and financing, it's impossible to make headway to reduce road accidents. And I'm talking on behalf of the Dominican Republic to share our experience when it comes to financing for road safety and how joint actions between the public and private sector have been key. No financial body in any country without real institutional coordination can succeed. We have 21 public-private partnerships for road security and we have declared road safety a national priority through the presidential decree. This effort is leading to concrete results. In July 2025, the Directorate of the Inter-American Development Bank approved an implementation program for our national road safety policy for the Dominican Republic to the tune of $200 million focused on the following components: infrastructure, Working on allocating the necessary budget to all of the institutions tasked with implementing road safety. Furthermore, political support is essential from the highest level of authority in order to achieve this goal. We have developed national communication campaigns on road accidents where we have received joint funding from private companies, and we have also worked on standardizing certified helmets so all motorcyclists and passengers have to wear a helmet that can actually save their lives. And in this regard, we have made a lot of progress to the point that each motorcycle is now sold with a certified helmet. This is not enough though if we don't invest where we need it the most. For example, data with more than 10 government agencies who are working together to ensure that we have quality data. All of this above-mentioned effort is aligned with the overall goal of reducing the amount of deaths and injuries from traffic and road accidents in line with the UN and WHO guidelines. We can't address this alone though because Road safety is the responsibility of a shared commitment from all of us. Thank you.

I thank the distinguished representative of the Dominican Republic. I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Senegal.

Excellencies, distinguished panelists, I'm speaking on behalf of the government. I'm the Director General of NAZER. It's the National Agency for Road Safety. I just wanted to say that traffic accidents are a public health issue in Senegal, and Awa Sa mentioned this earlier. The figures are alarming. 850 people die on our roads in addition to 12,700 people injured.

Thank you.

There are serious injuries, lighter injuries. So in light of all that, there are huge sums that are lost every year, roughly equivalent to 4% to 5% of our GDP. At the social level, I think it also creates psychological problems. It does. The victims and their families For this reason, the government of Senegal has established the structure, Nazir. So in 2024, in October, Senegal created a public consultation on public transport. It's the first time in our history that such consultations, this kind of meeting was established, and this to combat traffic accidents. Thus, currently there are 4 main causes of road accidents in Senegal. First of all, speeding. 29% of accidents can be ascribed to speeding, including excessive— including dangerous behavior such as sending text messages while at the wheel. There are also aggravating factors, for instance, not wearing a seatbelt.

Yes.

That's a serious problem, a real problem. And when it comes to those on bicycles and motorcycles not wearing helmets. So NAZEA has taken various measures to combat traffic accidents. We've established what we call is the BAC, and that's a bulletin which analyzes road accident data because to combat This problem, we need to have reliable data on the number of accidents, the victims, the number of people injured or deceased. And for that reason, we've also set up a platform, this platform, because previously we had accident data coming from the police, the gendarmerie, from the fire brigade, from the health service. But we've now set up this platform. that pools all the data and harmonizes it. In addition, we have a national road safety strategy covering the period 2026 to 2030. This goes in hand with— the speaker's microphone has been cut off.

The distinguished representative of Senegal. I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Spain.

Good morning again. Well, all of us here, more or less all of us, know what we need to do in order to reduce the amount of accidents and victims of traffic accidents. The crux of this issue is why aren't we doing it? The issue is political will and political priorities and the challenge that we all have is to manage to make fighting for road safety a political priority and ensuring that it's backed with funding. Because actually expenditure on this is not expenditure, it's an investment and it yields a great return for the state. And so we need to work with the budgetary authorities so that we don't have limits on investments in road safety. Just a point of information. In Spain, everything— all that we earn from fines is reinvested in road safety, and that's a way of showing our priorities. But not everything is financing. In Spain, what we've been doing lately is that we've been ensuring that everyone wears their seatbelt.

Yes.

And this has cost us zero euros for the government. We've implemented 30 kilometers an hour speed limits in our cities in all one-way streets, and that has cost the government zero, nothing. And we've seen a 14% reduction in the amount of people killed by traffic accidents in urban areas. And we've also made helmets obligatory for delivery drivers. And the economic cost of that to us, for the government, has also been zero. We've reduced the alcohol limit, zero euros for the government. And so investment is important, but not everything is financial. The last thing I'd like to say is that the amount— well, traffic accidents is too important an issue to leave it in the hands of the government alone. We need civil society to be involved. And we also need to ensure that the drivers' clubs are on board. In Latin America, all of the drivers' clubs, automobile clubs are working on road safety projects. And this boosts their credibility. They have quite a lot of power and they've been collaborating with the victims of traffic accidents. So the union of victims, them joining these automobile clubs, is having exceptional results.

Thank you.

Thank you, Representative of Spain.

I now give the floor to the observer of United Nations Development Fund.

Excellencies, thank you, Chair. Excellencies, I'm speaking on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP. I want you to think about a courier in Istanbul, a boda-boda rider in Nairobi, a moto taxi driver in Kigali, a moto concho in Santo Domingo. The roads they travel are their road to income, to school, to family, yet Too often, these roads also lead to injury or death. Road safety is not only a health issue, but a broader development issue. In cities across the Global South, safe mobility is a foundation of shared prosperity. Unsafe roads can stand between young people, women, and informal transport workers and the jobs, the schools, and clinics they need to reach. Seen through this lens, the Decade of Action is not only about saving lives, it's about expanding opportunity, reducing inequality, and unlocking inclusive economic growth. UNDP contributes to global road safety where it can add distinctive value: strengthening governance, mobilizing financing, supporting whole-of-government coordination, and leveraging private sector market shaping and partnerships, complementing the work of WHO, UNICEF, and other key partners. UNDP has worked with countries across regions and with diverse partners to deliver road safety programs. For instance, in Zambia, the Pedestrian First initiative supported the implementation of Zambia's non-motorized transport strategy to promote the construction of safe sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and pedestrian crossings for vulnerable road users. In Armenia, UNDP built the region's first real-time road crash data platform and worked with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Yerevan Municipality on behavioral interventions that reached 21,000 drivers and reduced repeat speeding by 18%. In Tunisia and Zambia, UNDP supported investment cases that have detailed the economic case for greater investment in road safety. Tunisia, for example, can avert more than $20 billion in economic losses over the next 3 decades with recommended interventions. Over the last year, our broader engagement with member states on road safety, including as part of the UN Road Safety Fund's call for proposals, have— has revealed both strong demand and significant opportunity to more deeply embed road safety in the prosperity agenda. That includes safer mobility for gig economy couriers and young motorcycle workers, Gender-responsive transport and safer access for women, children, and persons with disabilities— areas that all remain persistently underfunded. UNDP welcomes a high-level meeting and the political declaration as important opportunities to advance road safety as a critical enabler of sustainable development.

I thank the observer of UNDP. I now give the floor to the observer Thank you.

Road safety does not suffer from lack of evidence.

It suffers from the lack of investment in implementation.

Every year, we continue to fund the consequences of road crashes for more than we fund preventing them. If governments are serious about halving road deaths by 2030, road safety financing can no longer rely on short-term projects or political cycles. We need ring-fenced national road safety budgets with annual public reporting on how funds are allocated, spent, and what they achieve.

We also need to rethink what we finance.

Capacity building is not enough if communities lack the resources to act. Policies are not enough if implementation never reaches the street. And helmet laws are not enough if the only helmet many riders can afford cannot save their lives. Our research shows that affordability has become a major barrier to protection.

Safe helmets should not be a luxury.

If a helmet cannot save a life, it should not be sold.

And finally, financing must reach those delivering change. Grassroots NGOs are implementing proven interventions every day, yet they remain among the least funded actors in road safety. Sustainable financing means investing, investing not only in programs but in the partnerships that turn commitments into safer roads. Thank you.

I thank the observer of Global Alliance of NGOs. I now give the floor to the Observer of Ethiopia.

Thank you, Mr. Co-Chair. Excellencies, road traffic crashes and injuries remain a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Africa continues to bear a disproportionately heavy burden with significant social and economic costs. Road safety is a shared responsibility. Addressing this challenge requires a whole-of-society approach bringing together governments, communities, civil society, the private sector, development partners, and international organizations. Sustained public awareness, responsible road use behavior, effective enforcement, and collective ownership are essential to achieving safer roads. Ethiopia is committed to advancing road safety nationally and across the region. We are strengthening our road safety systems through improved data, enhanced post-crash care, road safety education, public awareness, better infrastructure, and effective law enforcement. Our urban corridor development projects are designed not only to improve mobility but also to protect pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. The corridor development program, led by His Excellency Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, places particular emphasis on promoting non-motorized transport and expanding safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists. Ethiopia is also aligning its efforts with the Africa Road Safety Action Plan, with a focus on institutional strengthening, safer roads, responsible road users, speed management, and improved post-crash response. New legal frameworks and early interventions are being introduced to address the root causes of road traffic crashes. We highly value the partnership of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa which has supported Ethiopia through policy advice, country-level assessments, and capacity building. Technical guidance and capacity building remain critical to enabling stakeholders to identify effective interventions, including routine road safety inspections and targeted speed management measures in high-risk areas. In November 2025, the Government of Ethiopia, in partnership with the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and development partners commemorated Africa Road Safety Day and the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. This important observance brought together leaders, survivors, families of victims, and technical partners, reaffirming our shared commitment to move from remembrance to concrete action. In conclusion, road safety requires sustained political commitment, adequate resources, effective implementation, and strong partnerships. By working together across sectors and across borders, we can prevent avoidable deaths and injuries and build safer and more sustainable transport systems for all. I thank you.

I thank the Observer of Ethiopia. I now give the floor to the Observer of Youth Publications and Socioeconomic Forum, Stakeholder 2.

Thank you, Chair, Excellencies, and distinguished delegates. My name is Joshua Shin. I'm 15 years old, and I take the floor on behalf of the Diemun Foundation. For this high-level meeting on global road safety to be properly executed under the 2030 Agenda, we have to acknowledge that this whole-of-society approach becomes fundamentally incomplete when children and youth aren't meaningfully included. On a personal note, I also speak here today on my own experience as someone who has not only faced a road collision But also having a mother who has experienced a traumatic collision that led her to stop driving till this day. Although she's improving, she is proof that road traffic injuries go far beyond just the site of impact. Having lived my entire life next to the George Washington Bridge, proven to be the busiest bridge in the world, I see how a single crossroad can shape a young person's life. It ultimately determines civic engagement access to public institutions and educational opportunities around me. This high-level meeting is more than just creating a framework that protects all demographics, but it's a declaration that urges authorities to work with those on the ground. And although many constituents and I who live within the area are quite privileged to have safer roads compared to higher-risk zones, we still face disproportionate resource allocations Emotional trauma, tardy reports, and unfortunately, physical harm, proving that global road safety is not only fragmented but systemically uneven despite living in such an environment. Although young people's perspectives are rarely meaningfully included in international policymaking, we have to at least take smaller local steps through youth-led safety audits, establishing local councils, or directly speaking with victims and meeting with their struggles in your respective capacities.

Thank you.

Children and young people are disproportionately affected when public transportation, cleaner roads, and stricter safeguards are treated as privileges instead of basic rights, which stresses that local action requires local resources, making multisectoral coordination between local, state, and federal governments an absolute necessity. And that starts here. Your Excellencies and distinguished delegates, you have both the opportunity and the responsibility to halving road traffic deaths by 2030. We children and youth demand that you not only leave New York with a signed progress declaration, but a framework that explicitly addresses and protects young people worldwide. Our lives depend on the implementations made here today. Thank you.

I thank the representatives of youth publications and socioeconomic forum. I now give the floor to the representatives of Senegal.

Thank you.

Intervention en français.

I'll speak French. I wanted to support Ms. Awa Sarr's briefing from the NGO Lazare, who were working within the framework of The Youth Olympics for Senegal. We are honored to be hosting that event for the first time in Senegal. And so efforts to refurbish roads around the competition is being engaged in, and almost all of the events in affected zones will benefit from measures to boost safety like speed bumps, improved signage, and we are benefiting from support from LASER on this and ARAP also. So with the support of our technical and financial partners, we are attaching particular importance to road safety in the implementation of infrastructure projects above and beyond construction work and road rehabilitation. We have engaged in awareness raising and have been encouraging including security in these construction projects and making progress there. We've engaged in societal measures, awareness raising campaigns, training on road safety, and boosting the capacities of communities. Particular attention has been paid to school establishments by providing students and teachers with educational tools to foster responsible behavior on the roads. Thank you.

I thank the representatives of Senegal. I now give the floor to the representatives of Alliance of Global Volunteer Organizations.

Thank you, Chair. Distinguished colleagues, colleagues, representatives of civil society, global road safety cannot be separated from the protection of nature or from the wider systems through which humanity moves. Roads, bridges, ports, rivers, maritime routes, and natural tourism destinations exist within territories shaped by watersheds, forests, wetlands, mountains, and oceans. When these ecosystems are degraded, communities and visitors face greater risk from flooding, erosion, landslides, infrastructure collapse, maritime accidents, and unsafe displacement. This scale of this challenge is undeniable. Road crashes claim approximately 1 million lives every year, and more than 90% of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. At the same time, over 80% of the volume of international trade in goods transported at sea. Transboundary waters generate 60% of the world's freshwater flows, while 153 countries share at least one of the planet's 286 transboundary river and lake basins, or 592 identified transboundary aquifer systems. These figures demonstrate that road safety, maritime safety, water security, environmental protection, and international cooperation are not separate agendas. They are interconnected foundations of human mobility, economic stability, and peace. This approach is supported by the United Nations Conference and International Conventions governing safe mobility, water, oceans, climate, and biodiversity, including the Global High-Level Meetings on Road Safety and the 2023-26 United Nations Water Conferences, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Water Courses Convention and the UNICEF Convention of Transboundary Water Cooperation, the SOLAS, MARPOL, and Cold Rec Maritime Conventions, the Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention on Wetlands, Paris Agreement, Escazú Agreement, as well with— together with the General Assembly Resolution 78300 recognizing the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. These instruments provide a global framework for protecting life, restoring ecosystems, ensuring safe navigation, nature tourism and sports training, water diplomacy, and promoting peaceful cooperation over shared rivers, aquifers, coasts, and oceans. Our oceans are equally important. Maritime trade routes connect economies and carry most internationally traded goods. Their safety depends on healthy marine ecosystems responsible for port infrastructure, international cooperation, and respect for the communities that live on the jurisdictions. For this reason, the National Water Corporation of Colombia, along with the Alliance of Global Volunteer Organizations, have raised the need to establish a national water agency that will address water governance comprehensively and safe mobility through transboundary waters, maritime territories, climate resilience, scientific monitoring, and international water diplomacy.

I thank the representative of Alliance of Global Volunteer Organizations. I now give the floor to the representative of Global HealthReach Foundation.

Thank you, Chairs, Excellencies, and distinguished delegates. Namaste. My name is Neharaj Pitla, and I'm the founder of Global HealthReach Foundation and a global surgery advocate representing the Coalition for Traumatic Brain Injury. Every road crash does not end at the site of impact. For millions of survivors, it marks the beginning of lifelong neurological, physical, psychological, and socioeconomic consequences requiring sustained systems of trauma care, rehabilitation, and long-term support. With an estimated 34 million people sustaining traumatic brain injury in road traffic collisions each year, achieving our shared commitment to halve global road deaths will require coordinated action across sectors. Most importantly, it will require young people at the table as equal partners in shaping, implementing, and holding road safety policies to account. Dear colleagues, I speak here today from lived experience as someone who has lost a loved one due to the consequences of inadequate road safety systems. Safer roads and safer vehicles are indispensable, but on their own, they're not enough. Road safety is not only about preventing crashes, it is also about deciding who survives them. Almost 70% of road traffic collision fatalities involve head injuries, with 32% being isolated head injuries. Head injury following a road traffic collision is more common in LMICs where timely trauma surgical and rehabilitation services are often hardest to reach. Yet traumatic brain injury continues to receive limited visibility within the surveillance systems, financing frameworks, rehabilitation strategies, and long-term policy planning. This is precisely why road safety and traumatic brain injury cannot be addressed separately. Excellencies, if road safety is truly to remain the forefront of global health agenda, we must recognize trauma and surgical systems, including emergency surgery, anesthesia, critical care, and rehabilitation, as a core pillar of post-crash response in every national road safety strategy and financing framework. Member states should strengthen the identification, surveillance, treatment, rehabilitation, and long-term follow-up of traumatic brain injury Within national health information and road safety systems. Young people should be involved in deciding— designing safer mobility policies, community-first initiatives, survivor support systems, public education, and accountability mechanisms. If we are truly committed to halving road deaths by 2030, then let us recognize that road safety cannot end with prevention alone. It must encompass the full continuum of care from prevention and emergency response to rehabilitation, long-term recovery, and sustained support for survivors, families, and caregivers. Thank you.

I thank the representative of Global HealthReach Foundation. I now give the floor to the representative of Sri Krishna Research Center.

I come to you from India with a vision to reduce the alarming load Global road safety crisis. I'm addressing a different issue, that is the A-pillar in the cars. Despite the UN Decade of Action and global efforts during the last 2 decades, there is no reduction in road crash deaths, resulting in about 25 million lives lost and 1 billion people injured.

Thank you.

A staggering number, isn't it? It is becoming clear that our current measures need to be fortified with new advances, new innovations. 90% of road crash deaths are attributed to driver error, but the A-pillar, the structural support on both sides of the windscreen present in all vehicles, globally create a blind spot that the drivers can't see the pedestrians, the traffic, the cyclists at times, at critical times. The A-pillar, the structural support on both sides of the windscreen— in 2006, I serendipitously identified that this is one of the major causes for road traffic crash deaths and injuries. And I proposed a solution, the A1 pillar concept, in which the design of the car is modified slightly by shifting the A-pillar a little back to give the drivers an unobstructed view of the traffic, pedestrians, etc., as a result of which they would be in a better position to avert crashes. I followed up with the global bodies and the manufacturers, and I respectfully urge the United Nations, UNEC regulators, and vehicle manufacturers to prioritize driver visibility first. If the drivers can't see the traffic or the pedestrians, how can we expect them to avert the crash. We blame the drivers, but the vehicle is the problem which has to be resolved. Safer design will benefit all road users and save millions of lives. I will conclude that the governments also should support this transition when the vehicles change their design to accommodate— I mean, to resolve the A-pillar problem. Thank you.

I thank the representative of Sri Krishna Research Centre. I now give the floor to the representative of Falconey.

Good morning, honorable authorities and distinguished colleagues. From our experience, I would mention that road safety shouldn't be considered a financing issue. When management practices are adequately applied, road safety is in fact a form of preventing losses and expenditures. In Brazil, a study conducted by our Federal Highway Police and IPEA, our national statistics institute, found out that a death on the road is not only an immeasurable loss of life, it also represents a loss of more than $300,000, accounting for private and public impacts. The losses consider damage to property, emergency response, medical services, traffic jams, and even non-direct impacts such as the contribution to society a person involved in a fatal crash will not be able to do anymore. On the other hand, public policies adequately designed and implemented will produce preventive actions and contain these impacts, increasing the available resources to be reinvested, further preventing crashes and losses. What we want to emphasize is that there was no increase in the total investment in the road safety programs Conducted. What happened is that the existing resources were now strategically planned and directed to the hotspots and critical profiles, to evidence— through evidence-based interventions. One program alone in the federal district in Brazil resulted in more than 100 lives saved, thus generating savings reinvested in road safety. Such progress— such programs cost less than the impact of a fatal crash. And in our experience, organizations such as Ambev, Porto Seguro, iFood, and many others in Brazil joined forces to make it possible. This seems intuitive, but it's not simple. Adequate targets must be set, actions planned, experts and authorities mobilized, and most importantly, a governance routine must be established, ultimately increasing management maturity and ensure sustainable results.

I thank the representative of Falconi. I now give the floor to the representative of Project Cares.

Distinguished delegates, esteemed colleagues, and fellow advocates, good afternoon. Since 2010, Project Cares RS10P has embodied the principle of whole-of-government and whole-of-society action. Conceived as the Philippines' response to the first UN Decade of Action for Road Safety, it united government agencies, civil society, and advocates from national to grassroots communities level under one coalition for roads, environment, and safety. We recognized early that road safety cannot be sustained through isolated projects. That is why we advanced RTSIP apps, the Road Traffic Safety and Injury Prevention Action Plans, Programs, and Systems. This framework ensures that every stakeholder, from barangay councils to provincial governments, from health offices to civil society, all contribute to a unified system of prevention, enforcement, education, and even remembrance. Our experience demonstrates that financing and capacity are strengthened when responsibility is shared. For example, the annual World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, which we have commemorated for 20 consecutive years, is not only a solemn tribute but also a mobilizing force that draws in government leaders, private sector partners, and community volunteers to sustain advocacy and resources. The Barangay RTSIP apps launched recently is our latest innovation. It aggressively engages local decision-makers and private sector influencers, embedding accountability at the grassroots level. By institutionalizing road traffic safety and injury prevention at the barangay scale, we ensure that financing is not dependent on one agency alone but distributed across sectors, making it more resilient and sustainable. Project CARES RS10P RTSIP-APS proves that Vision Zero is achievable when, when governments, civil society, and communities act together, pooling resources, building capacity, and committing to accountability. This is the essence of whole-of-government and whole-of-society action, meaning shared responsibility, shared financing, and shared success in saving lives. Together, we can do more. Together, we can serve better. Together, we can help heal and save more lives. Thank you so much.

I thank the representative of Project CARES. We have heard the last speaker of the interactive segment, and I would now like to pass it on to my fellow co-chair, Mr. Benazir Bulajul, Please, the floor is yours.

Chair, Honourable Minister, and now I will give the floor to distinguished panellists to respond to the comments and questions for final comments. And I— we can start with Yeah, sure.

Thank you. Um, thank you, Senegal, for calling road injuries a public health issue.

It really is.

And thank you, Spain, for calling it a political choice and for highlighting the economic developmental determinants of road safety. I would also like to thank everyone whose expertise, commitment, and hard work made this declaration possible here in this room and those joining us online. Its success reflects years of collaboration, shared purpose, and for many, personal sacrifice. Thank you for helping bring this shared vision to life. I would also like to join Mr. Benedict and acknowledge the leadership here. Morocco brought us together with various health ministries, transport, environment ministries into one room and agreeing to host us last year. Thank you very much. Kyrgyzstan Ministry of Health is co-chairing this panel. with the ministry engaging directly with UN Special Envoy on Prevention and Crash Care. That's the health leadership this agenda needs. No single ministry, sector, or organization can solve this alone. Transport builds the road. Health understands the human cost. Police enforce the rules. As highlighted by Mr. Jody, industry shapes the vehicles and technologies we use. Communities and youth tell us where systems fail and who is being left behind. A whole-of-society approach is not about asking everyone to do everything. It is about ensuring everyone does their part with shared accountability and coordinated leadership. Governments must create the structures that allow this collaboration to happen, not through fragmented projects, but through sustained investment, strong governance, and evidence-informed action. As researchers, our role is to make the invisible visible, challenge assumptions, and ensure that policies are shaped not only on what is possible but by who it affects the most. Because behind every statistic, there's a person. Behind every percentage is a family. And the true measure of progress is not only fewer deaths on our roads, it's whether every person in every community has a fair chance to get back home safely. Thank you.

Thank you, Madame Jagannath. And we move to Awa.

Merci beaucoup.

Thank you very much. Thank you to everyone who took the floor. I just wanted to respond some of the comments that really struck me. We are guarantors We're guarantors of peace, and when we live in a more peaceful world where there's less violence on the roads, there'll be fewer fatalities, and we'll have peace in our hearts, in our societies, and the economy will be able to function. Working together, we should make sure that when our kids go to school, they do so in peace. Safely. As we can say the same applies to people going to mosques, to churches. They should be able to do so in peace. And for that we need appropriate policies, laws, and inclusive financing to ensure that we have roads that are safe. We need an accumulation of measures, steps taken by all stakeholders, government decision-making, global institutions adopting the right measures. We must be courageous because taking action requires courage. The states who simply stick to words as opposed to deeds won't be able to achieve the SDGs, whereas those who are doing deeds, who are taking action, they've already managed to reduce fatalities on the roads. They've managed to reduce the number of people ending up with disabilities due to road accidents. So we want roads where there's leeway. We want to build such roads. We investors as well. Roads which are safe for everybody. Let's do so. Let's build these roads methodically, courageously. Let's take action for road safety for our children, for the future of our nations, for the future of the world, for peace in our world.

I thank you.

And we move to Mr. Jordi.

Thank you for all the interventions here. I think that we have learned many things today and we are leaving with more drive, if I can say. I was inspired by the comment that our colleague said that all starts with a political will, and I believe that this is one important segment. But then the question is, are the strategies that we are defining here going to survive the next political cycle, because we are in many places in democracies and sometimes change, and are we all attacking this in one direction, or— I just make that comment because all know the Vision Zero that Sweden has been exporting many times, and it's amazing because whatever is the government in place, this seems to be a strategy that is not questioned. We just follow. In other places in the world, this thing is kind of zigzagging, and you lose a lot of energy and power here. Another conclusion is that this is a complex problem where there are many stakeholders, the governments with legislation and political will, enforcement, and I try to also to show here the potential of the private industry, because the private industry has many vehicles around the world, everywhere, moving goods and people, and I think that if the willingness is to improve, this can momentarily complement the efforts that are done by the local governments. Understanding that this is a task for everybody and every time, how we make ourselves accountable. I think that having a forum where we can share our best practices and also our sometimes mistakes thinking that acting in a certain way will get some results, and sometimes it's not as easy as it looks on paper. In the distribution of helmets I mentioned before, the first set of helmets that we provided, we had to recall them because they were not meeting the spec. But now we have a better way to approach that, so I think that this is also super important, the potential of the private sector supporting here. So thank you for organizing this and let's put action plans here that are doable.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jordi Lombardi. And we come to the last speaker, Mr. Benedict.

Sorry. Thank you for all the contributions and representations because it's from the NGOs, from private sector, from the UN organizations. It makes it clear that there's quite a strong kind of push for road safety from those sectors and angles. As mentioned, the private sector is being mentioned. It's not just that the governments or the public sector needs to step in and that's also very clear coming out of those presentations. This is a joint, shared kind of responsibility, and everybody can do something about it, but it needs to be done in a kind of holistic manner. So I was very pleased to hear your presentation, Jordi, but also this morning's Amazon presentation also in that regard. Private sector, big companies, smaller companies can do indeed their role and can improve road safety. And also private sector can be involved through public sector kind of interventions. As I said, outsourcing of vehicle inspection facilities and so on. Things can be done, so there's no need to wait for the government or the public sector to step in. Of course, public sector, the government is important, so this kind of events are important to keep speaking up for interventions that make sense. Vision Zero, that kind of sustainable road safety kind of interventions can only be done if there is a kind of continuity in the public policy. And financing, again, is very important in that regard. So please, in order to prioritize road safety, we need to keep speaking up in that regard. so that governments, from one government to another government, keep prioritizing road safety as an important issue. And that's what I would like to emphasize here. And if you have a solid public policy in place, then public financing and private financing will follow. So thank you for that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Benedikt, for your closing remark, and now we have here the last speaker in this panel discussion. But allow me, as co-chair of this session, to close with some remarks. Before to close this session, I want to remind what my friend Peri Navarro from Spain said: we all know what we have to do; unfortunately, we don't do that because we have less political commitment. Thank you very much, Some initiatives don't need necessarily the money, but need only the political decision, the willingness to assume the responsibility we have. I hope this situation can be changed very soon everywhere in each country. I would like to thank the panellists and all the participants for their active engagement in panel discussion. Before concluding, members are reminded that the plenary segment of the High-Level Meeting will continue this afternoon at 3 PM in the General Assembly Hall. Panel Discussion 2 is now concluded. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you.