It is ten years now since the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) devoted a special chapter of its annual World Disasters Report to road safety.

That was the first international warning to be issued, the first time that anyone had said to the nations of the world: Beware! We are facing a major new public health issue, which will very rapidly assume the proportions of a disaster, unless drastic, coordinated action is taken immediately.

Today, in 2008, road crashes rank up there with tuberculosis and malaria as major killers in global terms and are the leading cause of death among people aged between 15 and 50 in the vast majority of low- and middle-income countries.

This is in spite of the fact that the most important measures that need to be taken are widely known. They are freely accessible and can be downloaded on the internet.

They are presented in the World report on road traffic injury prevention, jointly produced by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, in April 2004. It is all there in black and white.

President, The question then is why progress is not being made as would seem imperative?

To start with, there is the fact that a lack of reliable data implies that the magnitude of the problem remains vastly underestimated, and, besides human tragedy, the costs to societies and economies remain largely uncalculated.

It is not just a question of new roads and new vehicles; it is also essential to ensure that roads incorporate safety features and that road users behave responsibly.

Countries that have managed to lower road mortality have all done so by implementing the same measures described in the World report.

The three main measures are:

1. The creation of a lead agency responsible for guiding national road safety efforts. This should be a high-level agency, operating at the inter-ministerial level with a permanent budget allocation.

2. Rapid improvement of road crashes statistics.

3. Action to overcome major risk factors, including not wearing a seatbelt or helmet, speeding as well as drinking and driving. This does, of course, involve investing in repetitive mass awareness campaigns and providing law enforcement with effective means of control.

It is these emergency measures, effective in any context that we have set forth in a Practical Guide on Road Safety for all National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. This Practical Guide is referenced in the Secretary General’s note and report on Improving Global Road Safety (A/62/257).

The Guide will help not only Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies but also the wider civil society in their work with their respective governments in order to scale up efforts to further improve road safety.

The Guide was jointly produced with the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), which is based at our IFRC Secretariat in Geneva.

This Practical Guide is a tool for action. It gives 20 clear recommendations and is available to the world through the internet in four languages on the Federation’s website: www.ifrc.org.

It maps the road safety activities of National Societies showing those that are involved in this field.

The recent debates at the IFRC General Assembly which took place in Geneva in November 2007 confirmed the awareness and concern of the Red Cross and Red Crescent family towards road crash injuries and our willingness to tackle the issue.

This Guide acknowledges and commends also the efforts undertaken by the United Nations family to address the problem, particularly the creation of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration led by WHO in which the IFRC is also a member.

Following this publication, we are now moving with GRSP towards a second phase which will involve regional workshops around the world.

The first will be in Doha mid-May 2008. This will also emphasize the special contribution National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies can play as auxiliaries to their public authorities.

President, International advocacy for road safety has been making good progress since 2004, and this debate is evidence of some success.

However, with rare exceptions, until today donor countries do not include road safety in their international strategies for development co-operation, even though they consider this a priority challenge at home.

There is certainly room for change in this respect.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and their tens of millions of volunteers are often the first to arrive on the scene of a road accident and to assist the victims.

As witnesses we urge all governments to take the magnitude of this problem serious and to join in partnership to reverse the current deadly trend.

We highly commend the Sultanate of Oman for the leadership in drafting this year’s resolution on Global Road Safety.

We also very much appreciate and fully support the idea of holding a global inter-ministerial conference on road safety, hosted by the Russian Federation, as soon as possible.