New Deal in Road Safety: Why we need NGOs

Abstract

Road safety has been receiving increasing global attention, for example: the inclusion of road safety in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adoption of resolution 74/299 “Improving global road safety”; Stockholm Declaration (2020) reflecting the recommendations of the Academic Expert Group of the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety. Recognising that the target to reduce road deaths and serious injuries by 50% was not met in the First Decade of Action for Road Safety (Decade of Action) 2011–2020, the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development made a pledge in September 2019 to make the new decade one of action and delivery. On 28 October 2021, the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021–2030 (the Global Plan) was launched to guide Member States in the implementation of key actions to improve road safety with the target to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by at least 50% by 2030 (WHO & UN Regional Commissions, 2021). The Global Plan calls on governmental agencies as the primary responsibility holder in delivering a safe road transport system and implementing the required road safety actions to achieve the global target of 50% reduction in deaths and injuries by 2030. The Global Plan also calls on other actors — nongovernment organisations (NGOs), academia, youth, funders, private sector and UN agencies — as important contributors. NGOs are groups organised independently from governments at a local, national or international level to serve a certain cause such as road safety. NGOs exist to drive actions and bring improvements on a societal issue, and, in the field of road safety, NGOs drive road safety actions to protect people from being killed or seriously injured in our ubiquitous use of the road transport system. The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety (the Alliance) is a member-based organization for NGOs working for road safety around the world and currently represents 288 NGO members in 98 countries. The Alliance was founded in 2011 by NGO members of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) with a mission to unite, empower and strengthen civil society to stimulate collaborative advocacy, action and accountability for road safety. The Alliance achieves this by providing services to its members in three key areas: networking and sharing, advocacy and accountability, and capacity development. The aim of this paper is to articulate the NGO response to the calls made in the Global Plan by analysing the current road safety context and what NGOs contribute to the 50% reduction target by 2030. The paper employs relevant literature and results of an online survey conducted by the Alliance to substantiate the analyses herein. This online survey was conducted 14 January – 3 February 2021 to collect NGO perspectives of the first Decade of Action in anticipation of the launch of the second Decade of Action (Alliance NGO survey). It was made available to the Alliance member NGOs in English, Spanish, and French. A total of 100 NGOs from 53 countries responded to this survey. Further details are available in the Alliance (2021).