It has officially been one full year since we saw the Decade of Action for Road Safety passed at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in May 2011. The Decade calls upon nations, governments, civil society and road safety stakeholders to take action in actively reducing road crashes globally. We take a look back at the Decade’s launch in 2011 and YOURS’ contribution throughout the first year.
In May 2011, some of the world’s most famous landmarks were lit up with the Decade of Action’s logo to mark its launch.
After one since the Decade of Action has launched, there has been significant efforts undertaken to begin ten years of action for road safety. The United Nations Road Safety Collaboration reports that the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 was launched in more than 100 countries, with one goal: to prevent five million road traffic deaths globally by 2020.
Moving from the Global Plan for the Decade to national action, many countries have taken measures towards improving road safety, either by developing national plans for the Decade (e.g. Australia, Mexico, the Philippines); introducing new laws (e.g. Chile, China, France, Honduras); or increasing enforcement of existing legislation (e.g. Brazil, Cambodia, the Russian Federation), among other concrete actions. The recent UN General Assembly resolution on global road safety sponsored by more than 80 countries gives further impetus to the Decade by calling on countries to implement road safety activities in each of the five pillars of the Global Plan.
All around the world there has been significant actions to advocate for the Decade of Action for Road Safety.
In May 2011 – YOURS travelled all the way from Europe to North America to launch the Decade of Action for Road Safety with 450 young people at the OSAID Conference in Toronto Canada. As well as bringing attention to the Decade’s launch, its significant to global road safety, YOURS explained that as the biggest victims of road crashes globally, young people MUST be part of the solution during the Decade and take action to be road safety ambassadors everywhere.
During YOURS’ launch in Canada, we gave out 450 Decade of Action tags that the young people wore throughout their conference on impaired driving.
Since the launch, all of YOURS’ actions have been conducted with the Decade of Action in mind and orientated around its priciples enabling us to contribute to the Decade.
As well as our launch, YOURS has facilitated Regional Youth Assemblies around the world, namely the European Youth Forum for Road Safety, the Middle Eastern Youth Assembly for Road Safety and the African Youth Assembly for Road Safety to mobilize young people around the world to take action for road safety.
In mobilizing young people around the world for road safety and providing tools and activities on which to unite and be inspired, YOURS also launched its advocacy and awareness activities in line with the Decade of Action. To coincide with the launch, YOURS launched the Surreal Poster Series to download free and use internationally. We also launched two international awareness campaigns.
To build on our capacity development program, YOURS launched this year, the Youth and Road Safety Action Kit! A unique tool to use during the Decade of Action that trains young people on the global road safety crisis and gives them the skills and knowlege to initiate sustainable action.
Finally, building on the kit, YOURS has began its workshops training young people to take action for road safety all around the world. In year, YOURS has initiated a whole host of action orientated activities that have all been operating in the spirit of the Decade of Action. We continue our support of the Decade of Action in the years to come! You can read all of our news and information taken place of the last year here.