25th meeting of the UNRSC in NYC

Intro

The IRVP were invited by Dr Teri Reynolds WHO to attend the 25th meeting of the UNRSC in NYC on the 12-13th April 2018, and to introduce our new Global Road Victims' Partnership to delegates in the Pillar 5 working group chaired by Dr Teri Reynolds.

Donna & Viviam both travelled to attend this very important event to represent the IRVP membership.

Following the Pillar 5 working group session, in the report back to plenary by the Vice Chair Eric Remacle from Handicap International, a slide was included outlining the launch of the IRVP at our recent International road victims' conference in Ireland, and which included the logos of our members at the time of the launch.

We were welcomed to the working group and told that our contribution was very much needed by Dr Adnan Hyder from John Hopkins University, and others, and we very much look forward to contributing to the work of the UNRSC and to the Pillar 5 working group going forward.

We are very happy to report that our membership now extends to over 60 NGOs from all regions of the world and will ensure that road victims will have a stronger voice, as we work together to advocate for the rights of road victims globally, and to ensure that there's a more focussed and improved Post Crash Response.

Thank you all for your continuing input and support. Together, and with all of your help, we can!

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate our member Brake as they were accepted as a full member of the UNRSC during this meeting, as were two other NGOs, EASST and CITA.

Congrats & well done to all.

Open Letter

Good morning everyone. My name is Donna Price, I've come here from Ireland, and I'm Co-Founder & Chair of the International Road Victims' Partnership, together with my good friend & colleague Viviam Perrone from Argentina who also joins me at the meeting here today.

We are two bereaved mothers whose sons were killed on the roads, through no fault of their own.

As a parent, the worst thing that can possibly happen is that you lose your child. If anything can make this worse, it's having to deal with the investigation & criminal and civil justice processes which follow, which you know nothing about, and for which there is little or no support.

The complacency which many of us personally experienced within the justice system, and which causes so many crashes, serves to re-traumatise us, seriously affecting our health and severely impacting on our family's financial and general wellbeing, with many being unable to continue to work or indeed function normally for a considerable time. This seems to be because the main focus in the justice system is on intentional crime rather than negligence or omissions, and so many of these needless deaths are treated as 'accidents' and investigated accordingly, whereas they should be treated as real crimes and investigated as homicides, unless and until the contrary is proven. This would also help to ensure that road victims are treated like other victims of crime, with the same right to free medical & rehabilitative care, information, support and protection.

It's against this background - and our own lived traumatic experience - that Viviam & I, founded the IRVP last year, and we are proud to say that our membership now extends to over 60 NGOs from all regions of the world.

Last month in Ireland we brought together delegates from all regions of the world for our first ever Global Road Victims' Conference. This inaugural conference of the IRVP, hosted by the Irish Road Victims' Association, was dedicated to Pillar 5 and the Post Crash Response, and dealt with issues of real concern to victims of road crashes, the bereaved families, and the emergency services. Together, we are focussed and united in Our Mission: to improve the Post Crash Response and advocate for road victims' rights globally.

This week, it's very disappointing for us to see little or no reference made to Justice - the police investigation, criminal justice, or civil compensation, in the UN declaration just circulated. If we don't have a thorough investigation in every case where's there's death or serious injury, we won't know the contributory causes of these collisions. We rely on this information being gathered in every case, not only to ensure that our families get some semblance of justice, but also so that there are effective deterrents in place to prevent a recurrence, and also to ensure that our road safety work is truly evidence based.

As we aim for ZERO, the only acceptable target for us, we need to be much more vociferous in terms of what's needed. Our children didn't die from incurable diseases. They were killed in totally preventable Crashes. We all know the causes. Together, we must do more to prevent them.

Having experienced the utter devastation caused by just one death or life altering injury, in our own home, our families are now compelled to devote our lives to try to prevent our pain and trauma being visited on other families and communities.

It's our overriding aim to ensure that road victims have a stronger voice. One that's united and global, since a death in a third world country is no less important or devastating than one in a high income country. This human pain and suffering transcends nationality, culture and religion. It is a human tragedy of immense proportions, yet unlike other tragedies such as aviation and maritime Crashes, we hear very little about them or their causes. This is because they tend to be individual tragedies just like our own.

It's important also to note that in the UN Plan for the Decade, even if the targets of halving death and injury were to be met, and it's acknowledged that they won't be, we are still accepting that over 600,000 will be killed and up to 25 million injured EVERY YEAR. Yet, no provision is being made to assist this huge group of traumatised people, leaving our NGOs, many of which are unfunded, to pick up the pieces and attempt to alleviate suffering.

We intend to continue to work with all stakeholders on a national and international level, and to enhance the work of the GA which has facilitated our coming together. Some of you will have already met many of us through our work in the GA Victims' group as we have been working together for a number of years already. Indeed founder board members of IRVP were the organisers of the Justice side event at the 2nd high level ministerial conference in Brasilia in 2015, and were panellists there in other side events organised by the WHO.

Lotte and other members of the Alliance's board have welcomed the formation of our new partnership, and indeed Rochelle has joined us a Consultant to our board, along with Dr Margie Peden and Joop Goos, each of whom have many years of experience in the road safety field.

Dr Margie has already called for road safety reviews to go wider than laws, and include a justice system review—our partnership can certainly help with that.

Following our inaugural conference in Ireland, our calls were outlined in the 'Mullingar Manifesto' - This is our NGOs' Declaration on Road Safety in the UN Decade of Action.

Our over-riding aim is to ensure road safety programmes in each of our countries, including those funded by international organisations, include the justice system—investigation, prosecution, sentencing, compensation and victims rights.

Post crash response includes, but is more than medical care.

Time is limited so I won't go into our calls in detail here, but they're clearly outlined in the declaration and I have a printed copy here today for all of you. Please share it widely and let's work together to include justice and the Post Crash Response as a much needed requisite for any successful global road safety plan.

This is vital, if we are to make any inroad into reducing the level of carnage and human suffering on the roads of the world, so do please use us in your international road safety projects.

On behalf of the IRVP board, and all of our NGO members in the International Road Victims' partnership, thank you for listening, for including us here today, and for your ongoing valued support.