4-7th December is the date for the 3 day residential Muscat Youth Summit taking place next week in Muscat, Oman. The event brings together thousands of young people from around the world to empower young people through interactive workshops, presentations and debates on youth development, leadership and participation. YOURS has the pleasure of running a day long workshop with young people at the summit on global youth and road safety issues.

The Muscat Youth Summit (MYS) is a flagship annual summit that takes place in Muscat, Oman and brings together over 1000 young people to empower them with key skills and knowledge to become active citizens, participants and future leaders.

This year, the summit is orientated around three key areas of focus; Social Entrepeneurship, Digital Participation and Urban Arts and Culture. From sustainable cities, graffiti art, filmmaking, creating social media to hybrid cities and digital empowerment. The Muscat Youth Summit has focusses on themes of immediate importance to young people in a contemporary changing world.

YOURS has the pleasure of delivering a workshop amidst this dynamic agenda. Our workshop – The Global Road Safety Crisis focuses on the following:

At a time when the world is facing many problems such as hunger, poverty, natural disasters, and wars, why focus on road safety? Aren’t there more important things to work towards? How is road safety a global humanitarian crisis and why does it deserve our attention now?

Young people under the age of 25 years are the main victims of road crashes worldwide. More young people die from road crashes than from HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis, or cancer. This means that road safety is a serious threat to youth no matter where they are. Why are young people overrepresented in road traffic injuries and deaths? What are the main risk factors?

Getting involved (1): Where to Start
Youth around the world are taking the lead on exciting and innovative road safety initiatives. How can you get involved? Where do you start? What are existing opportunities you can seize? What are the challenges and how can you overcome them?

Getting involved (2): Advocating for Road Safety
What do you want others to know about road safety? How can your message reach different audiences, friends, parents, governments and community organizations?
What tools and media are available? What else can you use?

Workshop Deliverables
Participants will be encouraged to use the knowledge, skills and tools they gained in previous MYS workshops to create road safety messages using different media. A range of outputs will be produced:

Films/videos/advertisements Photos Graffiti/ illustration/ posters Song/ music track A “Declaration” or recommendations

YOURS will be reporting from the summit on Monday and you can expect to see a full report next week including pictures and video report!

We have drafted and adopted this Declaration in order to proclaim our commitment to address the problem of road traffic fatalities and injuries, and to urge Europe to take action to prevent road accidents. This is the robust sentiment at the core of the European Youth Declaration for Road Safety that was adopted by over 52 youth delegates at the 4th European Youth Forum for Road Safety 2011. Now, European Youth Ambassadors for Road Safety go back to their nations to share the declaration with key decision makers to influence change across Europe.

The declaration, drafted by YOURS was officially adopted by the youth delegates from across Europe at the 4th Edition of the European Youth Forum for Road Safety 2011 held on 24-25th November 2011 at the European Commission, Brussels – Belgium. The youth delegates urge decision makers across Europe to commit to safer mobility because of the tragic circumstance that sees over 400,000 young people being killed on the world’s roads every year with thousands more seriously injurred.

Youth Commitment

The text of the delcaration includes:
We have respect for our own life and for the lives of our peers. Because life is so fragile, we must do our best to live safely and also encourage our peers do so. We fully acknowledge the importance of youth involvement in making road safety happen. We call for awareness among our peers of the serious risks they run in becoming involved in road traffic accidents. We call upon our peers to serve as role models on the road and to promote road safety among our friends and families – particularly our younger brothers and sisters. Specifically, we ask our peers to avoid driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, avoid speeding, refrain from aggressive behaviour on the road, use helmets when riding motorcycles and bicycles, wear seat-belts when in motor vehicles, and ensure that we are visible on the roads.

However, our efforts alone are not sufficient. We therefore also call upon our parents and guardians, our schools and universities, the communities in which we live – as well as on policy-makers, community-based organizations, private sector companies, media, celebrities and the entertainment sector – to share responsibility and work together with us to make the road ahead safe and sustainable. We also see that we have an obligation to help each others by sharing the knowledge and networking with other worldwide youth organizations.

We therefore urge you to:

• Continue to support the annual European Youth Forum for Road Safety and to acknowledge its importance as a forum for young people to meet and share best practices, and to make their voices heard at European level. 
• Develop and implement policies and initiatives to make European roads safer, in particular:to encourage through education at school the development of a road safety culture at a younger age; to develop, through the training and licensing process, a sense of individual responsibility and respect of other users; 
• to re-inforce the awareness amongst young people of the need to comply with road traffic rules and to avoid risky behaviours, in particular in relation with speed, drugs, alcohol and the use of mobile phones while driving;to improve the safety of young people as vulnerable road users, and to address as a priority the safety of young riders of powered-two-wheelers. 
• to prevent and limit the consequences of crashes involving more particularly young people through the development of safer infrastructure and vehicle technologies; 
• to strengthen efforts to reduce the number and severity of road traffic injuries which may have long-life dramatic consequences for young people; 
• Discuss youth and road safety issues, learn about the situation of young people on the roads and bring their issues to the forefront.

YOURS Director, Mr Floor Lieshout gave a presentation about using declarations in general to achieve effective change, ‘How to advocate using a declaration’, this presentation is attached in attachements.  His presentation is also attached as a video along with the presenatation of Communications Officer Mr Manpreet Darroch along with a highlights reel from the forum.

You can read the full text of the European Youth Declaration for Road Safety in the attachments.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies (IFRC) met on 22-25 November 2011 in Geneva, Switzerland for their annual General Assembly meeting. The meeting brought together 186 national societies from around the world to discuss international priorities for the organization. This year, IFRC have put road safety on the agenda and commemorate the Decade of Action for Road Safety.

The focus on road safety as a workshop at the IFRC General Assembly is a momentous occasion for the advancement of road safety internationally which brings attention to the cause with over 180 national societies who are active in the field of humanitarian support.

The various introductory presentations on the subject of road safety provided an insight into the relevance and importance of this issue and the reason for its inclusion in the Federation’s activities.The question of road safety is addressed in the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly 64/255 on Improving Global Road Safety and the commitment of our Federation in the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020.

The workshop discussions highlighted the following points:

1. The loss of human life and the social and economic consequences resulting from road accidents. This road safety crisis is a man-made problem, which leaves 1.3 million people dead and 50 million seriously injured each year.

2. The National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as auxiliaries to the public authorities, have a humanitarian imperative to address road safety in order to contribute to improving the situation.

3. This year’s International Federation General Assembly is a good time to act. The UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 is underway and provides the International Federation with an opportunity, through its network of experts and the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), to contribute with the valuable support that it can offer as a reference centre.

The recommendations are:

• Approve the common framework for action  “What a National Society can do for road safety”; as a starting point for road safety action;
• Approve the International Federation’s pledge to road safety
• Support the proposal to submit to the International Conference “A joint commitment (National Societies and governments) on road safety”;
• Undertake to report on the implementation of this commitment at the next General Assembly in 2013.

The follow up to these recommendations should create a sustainable movement through IFRC for effective road safety work in some of the world’s most affected areas. We would like to congratulate our partner GRSP (Global Road Safety Partnership) for their work to make this happen. At YOURS we will help them where needed to implement the recommendations. More information will be made available soon.