Omar Hilale, Morocco’s Ambassador to the United Nations, launched Morocco’s new global campaign for road safety at a high-level event hosted at the International Peace Institute (IPI), ahead of the 4th World Conference on Road Safety, which will be held for the first time on the African continent in Marrakech on February 18-20, 2025.
The theme of the campaign, dubbed “From New York to Marrakech,” is “A safe and sustainable mobility journey in cities.”
Hilale stated that Morocco hopes to become “the voice” of developing nations, which pay a heavy cost in terms of human life loss and socioeconomic damage, at the Road Safety Conference.
Morocco, as the host nation, is committed, he said, to working with the global safe community to create a “very strong and action-oriented” Marrakech Declaration that will be approved at the end of the Conference.
The envoy stated that Africa will receive special attention as a continent with rising road mortality rates and rapidly expanding mobility and transportation infrastructure.
Road safety has been a national priority in Morocco since February 18, 2005, when King Mohammed VI established the first national road safety policy. That was a “watershed moment” in Morocco’s institutional administration of road safety, and progress has been achieved since then, he added.
Morocco’s first Road Safety Strategy was in place from 2004 to 2013. Its Second Road Safety Strategy, which runs from 2017 to 2026, is aimed at reducing the number of road accident deaths by half by 2026.
Hilale noted that, under the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030, Morocco has already made significant progress, but much more work needs to be done.
Morocco previously submitted a resolution entitled Improving Global Road Safety, which was accepted by consensus on June 24, 2024, with the backing of 57 Member States.
The resolution urged Member States and key actors to increase their collective commitment to accelerating and intensifying efforts to implement the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety, and to increasing efforts to make road safety a political priority.