We capped off 2022 by forwarding the youth and road safety agenda during the 14th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion. The event, which happened from the 27th to the 30th of November in Adelaide, Australia brought together the global injury prevention community to highlight the vital work done on injury prevention and safety promotion.
SDG Champion for Education Nkumbuye Ami and YOURS – Youth for Road Safety Junior Project Manager Sana’a Khasawneh represent the Youth Coalition during the event. Ami and Sana’a presented evidence-based examples of how young people are working to meet the targets in the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030. They also emphasized the importance of different stakeholders working together to implement the World Health Organization (WHO) Policies for violence and injury prevention.
As stated in the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety, young people are key stakeholders in addressing road safety issues around the world. As a result, youth are calling on leaders and decision-makers to be included in the policymaking process on road safety and sustainable mobility.
Ami presented a study on the causes of road crashes among the students in the Huye District and Kigali City in Rwanda which contextualized the road safety issues young people face, especially in low-to-middle-income countries. He talked about how he conducted the research and how the data was collected and analyzed. The results showed that high speeds usually cause road crashes in the area. This was followed by a lack of education, drunk driving, and poor road infrastructure.
Sana’a joined a panel called State-of-the-Art Session – Road Safety: Vision Zero by 2050. How will we get there? She was joined by Nneka Henry of the United Nations Road Safety Fund, John Crozier of the National Trauma Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Martin Small of Martin Small Consulting, Monica Olyslagers of the International Road Assessment Programme – iRAP, and Etienne Krug of the World Health Organization.
During her intervention, Sana’a talked about how leaders can best involve young people in the policymaking process for road safety through the YOURS Policymakers’ Toolkit. She also provided the youth perspective on what could be done best to improve efforts toward achieving Vision Zero.
Throughout the event, our representatives elevated the demands of youth for road safety and sustainable mobility through meaningful youth engagement. They presented the work the Youth Coalition has done, through the Local Actions initiative, in supporting young people in creating and implementing impactful road safety projects in their communities.
“With our Local Actions and advocacy efforts implemented at both local and global levels, we aim to put road safety on the Global Agenda as part of the 2030 Youth Strategy and SDG implementation.”
Our representatives also shared our SDG Policy Briefs which establish the linkages between road safety and the rest of the Global Goals. Currently, we have three Policy Briefs published; SDG 4: Our Action Agenda for Safe Journeys to School, SDG 5: Gender Equality and Safe and Secure Mobility, and SDG 13: Safe Roads to a Climate-Proof Future.
Over 200 people registered for the event. Our representatives joined policymakers, government officials, researchers, NGO workers, academics, financers of prevention programs, safety officers, local council workers, health professionals, and more.