The First Global Ministerial Conference in Moscow

Time for action

About 1.3 million people dying each year; a kid dies every 3 minutes in traffic accidents… This and many other data call about importance of Road Safety issues in the world.

We need to combine forces and act jointly to save lives and reduce these figures. On 19-20^th of November 2009 the First Global Ministerial Conference was held in Moscow to ways of solving these problems. More than 1500 delegates from more than 150 countries were presented. Among the high-ranking delegates of the Conference there were ministers from more than 70 countries responsible for road safety, and the leaders of 20 inter-governmental and 80 non-governmental organizations, including delegation from Armenia

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) experts’ report, the road traffic has become a global catastrophe and if appropriate actions won’t be initiated, then till 2020 the death through road traffic crashes will become the main death cause in the world. The importance of road safety is seen from the fact that the UN’s 62-nd Summit was made a decision to hold a conference on this issue.

In his Speech he President of the Russian Federation Dimitri Medvedev noted that this problem used to be considered as an internal one, but as data states, it became one of the most important problems of international development and requires elaboration of the global strategy and initiation of actions.

There were several speeches done by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Chairman of the G8 Commission for Global Road Safety, Rashid Nurgalliev — Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Orjonikidze — Chief Director of UN Office in Geneva, UN Deputy Secretary, and Anarfi Asamoa Baah, UN Deputy Director General and others.

Conference summed up with the signing “Moscow Declaration” by participants.