The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety is holding the Eighth Global Meeting of non-governmental organizations advocating for road safety and road victims in El Salvador from the 6th to the 10th of March 2023. The event will be co-hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Vice-Minister of Transportation of El Salvador, His Excellency Saul Antonio Castelar Contreras.

The Eight Global Meeting
The Meeting will be a hybrid event so that multiple stakeholders and the wider NGO community can participate. It will feature capacity-building opportunities, inspiration from safe mobility experts, and a high-level symposium from key influencers from governments, multilateral organizations, the private sector, and academia.

Through the Meeting, road safety leaders and organizations will be able to explore the linkages between road safety, safe mobility, and other key global challenges addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and focus on accountability for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.

The Global Meeting is an avenue for road safety NGOs to come together and trigger stronger action to halve the number of road-related deaths by 2030 and call for action to guarantee that every person has access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable mobility. 

Rethinking road safety: mobility for people and planet
The Meeting will feature different topics in its agenda. It will cover topics around advocacy and accountability for evidence-based actions, organizational strengthening, and safe mobility as an enabler for the SDGs. It will include a symposium that features areas focused on the theme of “rethinking mobility”.

Through the Meeting, road safety NGOs will also partake in the UN Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) Meeting organized by the WHO followed by an Accountability Toolkit Session that will improve the delivery of services of the different organizations.

The Global Meeting partners include WALK 21, the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), iRAP – International Road Assessment Programme, and the International Road Federation (IRF).

REGISTER TO THE EIGHT GLOBAL MEETING HERE

Last week, we participated in the World Health Organization (WHO) Youth Council Inaugural meeting. Our Advocacy Director, Stefania Minniti, represented us and joined other representatives from diverse youth organizations from both health and non-health backgrounds. As a unit, the Youth Council will provide advice to and actively engage with the WHO Director-General and WHO Senior Leadership.

Below is a Statement from the WHO:

“The Youth Council is the central element of WHO’s commitment to engage with young people, by supporting their leadership, promoting partnerships, and advocating for their recognition and visibility,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Youth voices and your insights can make a real difference to realizing WHO’s vision of health for all” 

The Youth Council will provide advice on health and development issues affecting young people, actively engaging the WHO Director-General and senior WHO leadership. It will serve as a platform for designing and incubating new initiatives as well as expanding WHO’s existing youth engagement activities. Through the Youth Council, WHO will develop an inclusive Youth Engagement Strategy across all levels of the organization.

During the four-day meeting, the Youth Council members discussed key priorities and work plans to accelerate progress on universal health coverage, noncommunicable diseases, mental health, and youth leading for health. They interacted with the WHO Director-General, Chair of the WHO Executive Board, Dr. Kerstin Vesna Petrič, and other senior WHO leaders to brainstorm on concrete initiatives.

Several key outcomes of the meeting include:

1. agreeing on mechanisms for making partnership opportunities accessible to young people across the globe through the networks represented by the Youth Council members and beyond;
2. identifying avenues to establish channels for the Youth Council to showcase their work during key WHO meetings and collaborative events;
3. exploring gaps in the availability of data on health inequity issues of young people and identifying WHO technical support to report these gaps; and
4. developing a proposal to engage with WHO Member States. As a first step, the Youth Council identified opportunities for the inclusion of youth delegates as part of delegations from Member States and develop mechanisms to integrate youth delegate programmes with support from WHO leadership.

ACCESS ORIGINAL STATEMENT HERE

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Africa has the worst rate of road traffic accidents anywhere in the world. Earlier this month, a severe road crash was reported in Senegal which wounded 24 and killed another 20. BBC World covered the crash in a piece called Focus on Africa. To put things in perspective, we had a chat with one of our youth leaders based in Nigeria, Simon Patrick Obi, to talk about the situation in the region.

Road Safety in Africa
It has been recorded that Africa has a fatality rate of 26.6 deaths per 100,000 – three times the recorded rate in Europe. In our conversation, Simon shares that there are several interconnected reasons behind the region’s high road crash fatality rate. For one, Simon notes that poor education and road traffic regulation contribute greatly to the lack of road safety. 

He also notes that there are factors that need to work together so that people are kept safe on African roads. He says; 

“There are three factors that are responsible for road safety; the mechanical factor which has to do with the conditions of the vehicle, the environmental factor which has to do with the condition of the road, and the human factor which has to do with the behavior and attitude of the road users.”

Simon does acknowledge that there are obstacles faced by the African region in implementing road safety policies – obstacles which include funding for road infrastructure. “The funding available is not sufficient to respond to the ever-growing challenges of road safety due to the increased motorization in the continent.” 

What can be done? 
Despite the current road safety situation in the region, Simon sees that there are steps that can be taken to address the current traffic issues. 

“In terms of solutions that government should adopt, I would say that government should imbibe community actions in developing and implementing interventions. For instance, road crashes are the single biggest killer of young people – this means that interventions in policy which do not involve young people will likely lead to little or no results.”

He emphasizes the need to have inclusive strategies and policies in road safety to address the needs of all road users in the region.

Sharing some best practices, Simon talks about Ethiopia and how it adopted a non-motorized transport strategy that will improve sustainable mobility and reduce road crashes affecting vulnerable road users such as young people.

He shared how Nigeria is also doing its part to end road traffic deaths through the creation of lead agencies in charge of road safety through the Management of Road Safety Affairs.”

Simon ends by emphasizing that there is still more work to be done in efforts for more inclusive road safety strategies. Young people need to be involved.

LISTEN TO BBC’S FOCUS ON AFRICA 

Our Advocacy Director, Stefania Minniti, is attending the Inaugural Meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) Youth Council in Geneva, Switzerland from the 27th to the 30th of January to represent YOURS – Youth for Road Safety. The purpose of the meeting is to bring together the WHO Youth Council in person to finalize work plans and strategize on a roadmap through its working groups.

What is the WHO Youth Council? 
According to WHO, the WHO Youth Council is a newly set up mechanism for meaningful youth engagement that will provide direct advice to the Director-General. The Council will consist of international youth organizations supporting and providing recommendations on critical health and development issues affecting young people through a comprehensive and inclusive WHO Youth Engagement Strategy. 

The Youth Council will raise the profile of youth contribution to public health at a global, regional, national, and local entry-level. The Council will also support WHO in its efforts to strengthen youth contributions to public health systems through advocacy actions. 

The WHO Youth Council will drive a global advocacy initiative with related mandates and indicators. 

YOURS at the WHO Youth Council
YOURS joins the WHO Youth Council as one of the youth organizations promoting meaningful youth participation in road safety. YOURS has over a decade of experience in youth empowerment and meaningful youth participation. With the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety, YOURS represents over 1600 young people from 115 countries worldwide. 

Because road traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for youth aged 5-29 years, it is crucial that young leaders with experience in road safety and sustainable mobility are represented among the members of the WHO Youth Council.

Road safety is a facilitator of multiple Sustainable Development Goals, particularly good health and well-being, quality education, reduction of inequalities, sustainable cities, and climate action. Tackling road safety through meaningful youth participation as part of an overall approach to saving lives on the road will bring massive development co-benefits to overall development.

We will follow up with more details after attending the inauguration.

MORE ABOUT THE WHO YOUTH COUNCIL MEETING

From November 2020 to February 2022, the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety invited young leaders worldwide to participate in a second round of our Youth Consultations to gather data on young people’s overall ideas and actions on road safety challenges in their communities. The second call resulted in 117 consultations that were participated by over 700 young leaders.

Our youth leaders were guided by our Youth Consultations toolkit which allowed them to design project ideas they could possibly implement in their communities. They mapped out relevant stakeholders that could act as partners to implement the suggested ideas.

During the consultations, our youth leaders discussed how their voices were heard and represented through the Youth Statement. They identified the main road safety challenges they faced in their communities and used them as guidance to design their project’s objectives and potential activities through an action plan template also in the toolkit.

After following the Youth Consultation toolkit, youth leaders were able to co-design a project safety plan and develop steps to potentially turn the ideas into concrete evidence-based projects. 

From the consultations’ results, the Youth Coalition classified the most common project types; community mobilization, peer-to-peer engagement, infrastructure change, and advocacy. The predominant project-type recommendations fell under community mobilization because youth see a need to get more people involved in efforts to fight road traffic crashes as the biggest threat to the lives of young people. 

These four project types are now reflected in the four main priorities for Local Actions 2023. 

Other results of the consultations include a list of stakeholders and other key actors that would support youth leaders in realizing their projects and ensuring their impact locally. The stakeholders identified include; the government and public sector, academia, civil society, and youth.

From the consultations’ results, the Youth Coalition classified the most common project types; community mobilization, peer-to-peer engagement, infrastructure change, and advocacy. The predominant project-type recommendations fell under community mobilization because youth see a need to get more people involved in efforts to fight road traffic crashes as the biggest threat to the lives of young people.

These four project types are now reflected in the four main priorities for Local Actions 2023.

Other results of the consultations include a list of stakeholders and other key actors that would support youth leaders in realizing their projects and ensuring their impact locally. The stakeholders identified include; the government and public sector, academia, civil society, and youth.

Young people under 25 comprise over 40% of the global population with adolescents aged 10 to 19 years old. This accounts for an estimated 1.2 billion in the overall population.^[1] Despite the size of the adolescent population and the short and long-term benefits of investment in this age group, there is a struggle in efforts to leverage attention, funding, and political will toward adolescent health and well-being.

Adolescents have often been considered healthy but persistent and complex factors act as barriers to the health and well-being of many young people who contend with challenging contexts.^[2]  The second decade of life is a period of rapid development and growing independence with internal and external factors influencing adolescents’ present and future health and well-being.^[3]  Because of this, adolescents face complex challenges compounded by gender stereotyping, economic factors, and other social determinants of health that require a unique approach to the diverse range of needs within this demographic.^[4]

Importantly, adolescent health trends in recent decades have not seen improvements in health outcomes observed in the first decade of life. This is despite the fact that the majority of fatalities are related to preventable causes.^[5]  In fact, an estimated 1.1 million adolescents die each year from preventable causes^[6] such as interpersonal violence, HIV/AIDS, suicide, maternal health, and road traffic injury. ^[7]

Road traffic injury is a major public health burden globally, especially for children and youth. It is the leading cause of death for those aged 5 to 29.^[8] It is the third leading cause of death for adolescents aged 10 to 14 and the leading cause for those aged 15 to 19.^[9] Beyond fatalities, an estimated 10.5 million children and adolescents under 20 are injured or disabled by road traffic injury.^[10] Environments that are dominated by motorized traffic greatly impact adolescent health beyond injuries; outdoor air pollution, and lack of safe infrastructure for active transport contribute to other non-communicable diseases.^[11]

Despite the wide-ranging impacts of road traffic injury on adolescent health and the car-dominated environments that enable it, funding and political will are nowhere near commensurate with the scale of the issue. There is already a major funding disparity between the total global health assistance and investment in targeted interventions for adolescent health; only 2.2% is directed toward adolescents.^[12] Within this spending, only an estimated 0.3% of financing is invested in road safety interventions for this age group despite road traffic injuries being the leading cause of death for adolescents.^[13]

The pervasive overrepresentation of adolescents in road crashes, despite the multitude of road safety interventions in the past decade, suggests that innovative approaches are required to understand and address adolescents’ road crash risks. The focused attention required is often undermined by research. 

This results in missed opportunities to address specific challenges experienced by adolescents at risk of road injury.^[14]  We need more systematic and targeted practices to identify, assess, and address adolescent needs.  

Understanding the heterogeneous experiences of young people informs policy and programmatic interventions so that they can be more responsive to adolescents’ realities requires extending traditional research methods to embed multiple methods that prioritize youth participation as a key principle. The Gender and Adolescence Global Evidence (GAGI)^[15] is an example of what such an initiative could look like.

The collaborative and co-creation approaches that foster meaningful participation where researchers are engaging with adolescents and their stories provide opportunities to understand the highly diverse contexts, experiences, and strengths of adolescents across the globe. This particularly would pave the way to affirming the skills and agency of young people to achieve their aspirations for transport access and safety rather than be seen merely as abstract subjects for whom generic interventions are designed.^[16]

Additionally, while we recognize that there are methodological challenges to overcome reflecting decades of inaction in this respect, greater effort must be invested to enable the enthusiasm of young people so that they can translate these challenges into opportunities where they become active agents in evaluating interventions designed to serve them.

This requires prioritizing initiatives that meaningfully and practically engage young people in the design and implementation of project evaluations that consider and reflects their diverse values, identities, and culture. Incorporating adolescents in the evaluation process in turn increases the validity of findings. For example, when conducting interviews or presenting findings, youth partners are highly effective and authentic communicators, particularly when engaging with their peers as well as underserved or underrepresented populations. 

In summary, to generate policy-relevant data and foster road safety interventions that can address the distressingly persistent impacts of road injury experienced by adolescents, we must meaningfully engage diverse communities and thoughtfully create spaces where young people have a voice and the tools to be integral agents in the solution.