Governments meeting at the Ibero-American Summit of the Heads of State of Latin America, Spain and Portugal have agreed to organise a Ministerial Conference on road safety in 2008.
The proposal by the Government of Costa Rica was approved at the Summit in Chile, which was attended by Heads of State from across Latin America and the Caribbean.
The communiqué from the summit warns that “road traffic accidents are among the most important causes of mortality in Ibero-American countries representing enormous human, social and economic costs…requests the SEGIB [Ibero-American Secretariat General, based in Madrid] to facilitate contacts and cooperation with governmental representatives to assess the situation and to make the necessary progress in identifying initiatives in support of the efforts on a governmental level and the joint efforts of governments and social society to stop the road traffic accident epidemic in Latin America…and considers that it is necessary in the year 2008 to convene a Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, following on the Resolution on the Global Road Safety Crisis of the United Nations General Assembly in 2004”.
Rita Cuypers, Director of Campaigns at the FIA Foundation, said: “This decision to hold a regional Ministerial conference is the culmination of several years of advocacy by many road safety partners in Latin America. The FIA Foundation recently hosted a meeting in Paris for representatives of SEGIB and the Latin American Transitional Commission for road safety, which was established following the 2006 San Jose Declaration on road safety, to discuss a strategy for raising the political profile of road traffic injuries in the region. This Ministerial can play an important role in further developing road safety actions across the continent”.