Georgia co-hosts top UN forum on road safety

Georgia is one of the first countries to submit a voluntary review on road safety to the United Nations (UN) High Level Political Forum (HLPF).

The Georgian Government and the FIA Foundation co-hosted a HLPF side event, held in the US, that aimed to advance the agenda set by the Global Initiative for Child Health and Mobility by focusing on ensuring every child has a safe and healthy journey to and from school by 2030 as a priority in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

FIA Foundation is a foundation that carries out research into public policy issues relating to a vehicle’s interaction with society.

Members of the Child Health Initiative including UNICEF, Save the Children and the World Resources Institute joined the World Health Organisation and governments from around the world at the HLPF side event, titled ‘Safe and Sustainable Mobility for Children in the Global Goals’.

The session was part of the HLPF on Sustainable Development, the UN’s central platform for the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in September 2015.

Georgia was among the first group of 22 countries to submit a voluntary review of its road safety plan to the HLPF in 2016.

In collaboration with the FIA Foundation and its partners, the Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport (EASST) and Georgia’s Partnership for Road Safety, the Government of Georgia discussed ways to improve road safety in Georgia in its HLPF submission.

The Permanent Representative of Georgia to the United Nations, Ambassador Kaha Imnadze opened the session.

"Worldwide, we need to scale-up our response to prevent the man-made disaster of road traffic deaths and injury. Far too many people are being killed on the world’s roads. The response to this must be a priority for sustainable development,” he said.

"In the last decade, Georgia’s fatalities decreased by 20 percent even though the number of vehicles in our country tripled. We know there is much more that needs to be done and we must increase collaboration worldwide to address this crisis.”

Ambassador Imnadze was joined by Georgia’s Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Protection Teimuraz Murgulia, who emphasised the importance of sustainable transport both to reduce the burden of road traffic injury and reach targets on the environment and air quality.

The HLPF side event also included high-level representation from UNICEF Global Chief of Child Protection Cornelius Williams who co-chaired the opening session with Dr Etienne Krug.

He said: "While the global development community has focused on child survival for the under-fives, the major health burden for children in the second decade of life – road traffic injury – has not been adequately addressed. We are effectively losing the investment and the gains we have made due to the carnage on the world’s roads. As a child rights issue and as a development priority we must take action against road traffic injury.”

The session featured a strong focus on the Child Health Initiative as a partnership approach for safe, accessible, sustainable mobility to promote equity and combat poverty in the SDG agenda.