Since it was mandated in UN Resolution A/RES/75/308, the Alliance has been looking to the High-level Meeting on Global Road Safety, set to take place 30 June 2022–1 July 2022, with an equal sense of excitement and hope. It has mobilized its member NGOs to engage their Heads of State to attend in order to make the High-level Meeting a catalytic moment for real leadership, meaningful allocation of resources, and committed implementation of actions to meet the 2030 road safety target. Increasingly, however, our optimism is being challenged.
For more than a decade, the Russian Federation has played a constructive leading role at the United Nations on the Global Road Safety agenda and is the lead facilitator of the Declaration for the High-level Meeting.
The aggression initiated by the Russian Federation in Ukraine and subsequent UN and Member State sanctions against the Russian Federation continue to give us cause for great concern regarding whether a successful Declaration can be negotiated and therefore if the objective of the High-level Meeting to secure a decade of action and delivery can be successfully achieved.
In the current political context, the Russian Federation’s legitimacy to engage Member States in the constructive dialogue needed to achieve a meaningful Declaration draft has been seriously eroded. If Member States do not participate in the negotiations, the powerful text and meeting outcome that is so critically needed to give momentum to the second Decade of Action is sadly missed.
For the sake of the people who use the world’s roads and as a leading road safety voice for civil society, the Alliance calls for the High-level Meeting to be postponed or for another Member State to replace the Russian Federation as facilitator.
We must find a way forward. Without it, we are concerned that the vital opportunity to make a real change for road safety that will save the lives of many thousands of people around the world every year may be missed.
