The First UN Global Road Safety Week starts with a
World Youth Assembly in Geneva
Geneva, 23 April 2007 -- The First UN Global Road Safety Week starts
today 23 April with a World Youth Assembly in Geneva.
The First UN Global Road Safety Week, which will take place from 23 until
29 April 2007, is being held pursuant to a UN General Assembly resolution
on the basis of a proposal made by the UNECE.
“I am very pleased that the First UN Global Road Safety Week follows
the model of the four Road Safety Weeks that UNECE has organized since 1990:
around a common theme, and with a common logo and a common slogan”,
said Mr. Marek Belka, Executive Secretary of the UNECE.
For the Global Road Safety Week, the common theme that has been chosen is
Young Road Users including young drivers.
Many UNECE Governments, among others Albania, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic,
Estonia, France, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden,
UK and the USA, will organize road safety activities this week. In many other
countries around the world, hundreds of road safety events will take place
this week and in the following weeks.
“I am also very pleased that the European Commission has decided to
celebrate the European Road Safety Day on 27 April, therefore, within the
Week, and I commend the European Commission for its efforts to halve the number
of people killed on the EU roads” added Mr. Belka.
For the World Youth Assembly, the main global event of the Week, about 400
young people from about one hundred countries around the world meet in Geneva
on 23 and 24 April to discuss the safety of young road users from the various
national perspectives and to adopt a Declaration aimed at improving the safety
of young road users.
Activities around the World Youth Assembly include an exhibition, a film
festival, a literary competition and the release of 1049 balloons, representing
the number of young people killed everyday on the world roads.
In the UNECE region, despite the progress made in the past decades, still
about 150,000 people died and over 5.5 million were injured in 2004.
The road safety situation is particularly bad in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus
and Central Asia. For example, relative to the number of vehicles, the
number of people killed in this region in 2004 was almost 10 times
higher than in the EU-15. As to the young people killed on UNECE roads,
its number is 29,000.
Road safety is a major priority of the UNECE, which has developed rules
and regulations for safer roads, safer vehicles and safer driving behaviour.
These rules and regulations are constantly kept up to the best available
technologies and to the best national practices. They are applied in many
countries worldwide.
In addition to this regulatory work, the UNECE has organized since 1990
four Road Safety Weeks in the UNECE region.
For further information see: www.unece.org/trans/globalroadsafetyweek or
contact:
José Capel Ferrer, Director, or
Marie-Noëlle Poirier
UNECE Transport Division
Palais des Nations
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 2400, 917 3259
Fax: +41 (0) 22 917 0039
E-mail: [email protected]
Ref: ECE/TRANS/07/P05