On Thursday (18th July 2013), The Center for American Progress ran a social media chat on Youth and the Post-2015 Development Agenda. It focused on the important role young people will play in shaping and realizing the Post-2015 Development Agenda for Sustainable Development. We are happy to announce that the efforts of our partners and youth network brought road safety to the discussion with a question posed to the panel and answered by the chair of the discussion.
A year ago, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened a panel of 26 eminent people, including Center for American Progress Chair John Podesta and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, to make recommendations for an ambitious global development agenda beyond the conclusion of the Millennium Development Goals – the shared global antipoverty targets co-signed by all U.N. member states – at the end of 2015.
On Thursday 18th July, a social media chat took place in a Google+ Hangout to discuss youth issues for the Post-2015 agenda. It offered young people from around the world a chance to talk about pertinent issues related to global sustainable development. On the panel was Mr John Podesta, Chair of the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Under his leadership American Progress has become a notable leader in the development of and advocacy for progressive policy.
Alongside Podesta was Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, Tawakkol Karman was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 in recognition of her work in nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peacebuilding work in Yemen.
We called upon young people via social media to join together to bring road safety to the Post-2015 Agenda.
A joint advocacy push
In collaboration with the Makes Road Safe Campaign, the NGO Alliance for Road Safety and Global Youth Network for Road Safety, called upon young people, in our network and beyond to join together to call for road safety to be part of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The result was a joint advocacy push for road safety to be included as a topic of dicussion. We are happy to announce that a question on youth and road safety issues was put forward to the panel which John Podesta answered.
The question posed asked why, as the biggest killer of young people, that road safety is not included as a target for the agenda.
Specifically, we are pushing to bring attention to the facts that:
- road traffic injuries are the No.1 killer of young people and this is unacceptable
- this is a development issue, as it predominantly affects people in fast developing countries (low and middle-income)
- every day hundreds of thousands of young people commute to school using dangerous roads, we do not want to die to get an education
- the global road safety crisis needs a global solution and can only be tackled with a global cooperation
- we, the young people, care about this issue, and road safety must be in the post-2015 agenda
The Youth and Road Safety Action Kit offers an introduction to the road safety crisis facing young people globally. Read it here.
John Podesta recognized the question and the cause as a very important point for public health in terms of improving infrastructure to minimize risk to young people and the benefits that come from investing in road safety. Podesta mentioned the discussion by the UN High Level panel on incuding the need for more refinement and work to include road safety in some form in the agenda. He noted,
‘I’m hopeful as the Post-2015 process goes forward that continued attention on road safety will be front and center in the open working group process but also in the member state process’
This statement recognizes road safety as a major public health concern globally for all young people and as Podesta mentions, the momentum in keeping this cause on the agenda is needed to ensure that it is included in the targets for the Post-2015 development agenda. YOURS will be offering ways in which this can happen shortly in collaboration with you, the global youth network for road safety.
We thank you for your efforts so far and will keep you updated on the input for bringing road safety to the Sustainable Development Goals for the Post-2015 Agenda. The video can be viewed in the right column or by clicking on the picture below:
