On 10th April 2019, we joined the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety and its Global Meeting, to work with NGOs focusing on meaningful youth participation in road safety and the 2nd World Youth Assembly. The pre-meeting workshop brought together NGOs from around the world who were eager to hear more about road safety and youth.
The pre-meeting workshop focused on the following objectives:
- Explore why youth should be involved in the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, Stockholm, Sweden (February 2020), via the 2nd World Youth Assembly (WYA);
- To raise awareness of the importance of meaningful youth participation in all elements of road safety decision-making and explore the power of youth in road safety;
- To raise awareness of the WYA that precedes the Ministerial conference;
- Work with NGOs to explore how they can be involved in the WYA and the role of civil society.
Participants were introduced to key concepts behind meaningful youth participation for road safety, ensuring it is built in to the safe system approach and not bolted on in tokenism or decoration. Meaningful youth participation is essential in giving young people a voice as well as offering platforms for young people to take action.
“Who knows better about youth than youth themselves?”
NGOs expressed a strong will to be involved with the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety that will take place as a pre-event to the 3rd Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in February 2020, Stockholm, Sweden.
NGOS were asked to review how youth participatory their work has been and to see how they can increase their levels of participation.
Every day, nearly 1000 young people die on the world’s roads. 1000 is not just a number, each life lost represents a face, a family, a friend group, a community. In low and middle-income countries, where young populations are commonplace, it represents the loss of breadwinners, a worksforce, a future leader and the backbones of communities. This is why, before the statistics, engaging young people is essential to give them a chance at first being empowered to be safer on the road as well as take action to help create policies that are reflective of the lives young people live.
At the end of the workshop, participants agreed on the following demands and commitments:
- We call on our country minister responsible for road safety to attend the 3rd Ministerial Conference in Sweden;
- We demand that our minister brings a youth delegation to attend the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety taking place before the ministerial;
- We commit to championing meaningful youth participation in our road safety practice.
Thank you to all the NGOs who took part in our workshop session.