Indian diplomat Naidu leads difficult negotiations on new draft text on road safety

Deft negotiations led by Ambassador K Nagaraj Naidu, the Chef de Cabinet of the President of the UN General Assembly, has secured a consensual text for the political declaration on road safety which got complicated due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, sources said on Thursday.

Naidu, who had served as India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN previously, facilitated the consultations on behalf of the President of the UN General Assembly Abdulla Shahid, and was able to settle the stalemate and secure a consensual text for the political declaration, the sources said.

Shahid, in a letter to Member States while circulating the final text of the draft political declaration, "thanked" his Chef de Cabinet, members of his office and World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives for "their tireless" efforts in securing a consensual text for the political declaration, set to be adopted at the high-level meeting that begins Thursday.

The two-day high-level meeting on road safety will be held at the UN Headquarters June 30 - July 1 and is one of the most awaited mandated events during the 76th session of the General Assembly.

Shahid, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, WHO and UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Road Safety Jean Todt will address the opening of the high-level meeting, which is being convened under the theme of 'The 2030 horizon for road safety: securing a decade of action and delivery'.

A UN statement said that the political declaration, agreed in advance by consensus through intergovernmental negotiations, "offers a vision for the future of mobility as one that promotes health and well-being, protects the environment, and benefits all people.'' The political declaration ''recognises the importance of a holistic approach to address road safety, by highlighting the interlinkages between road safety and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Among other outcomes, the political declaration also seeks to convene a follow-up meeting on road safety in 2026, in an effort to sustain momentum, identifying gaps and solutions to address progress towards the achievement of the road safety-related SDGs targeted by 2030." Sources at the UN said that the disastrous war in Ukraine resulted in a crisis situation and dimmed the chances of ensuring successful negotiations of the political declaration.

With the co-facilitators of the Road Safety process being the delegations of Russia and Cote d'Ivoire, it is learnt that the Western European and Other States Group countries, including that of Japan and South Korea, wanted the President of the General Assembly to remove the Russian delegate as one of the co-facilitators of the process.

The sources added that procedurally, no President of the General Assembly had ever removed a co-facilitator just because a group of countries had no faith in the concerned delegate. Removing a co-facilitator would also have set a wrong precedent at the United Nations.

The stalemate persisted and the WEOG delegation refused to engage in the process. A draft text was submitted by the Russian and Cote d'Ivoire co-facilitators but silence was soon broken and the text failed to get consensus.

Sources added that a number of civil society organisations also voiced concern that failure to adopt a political declaration will be a lost opportunity to negotiate and agree to a powerful and unifying text on an issue that is so critically needed to give momentum to the Second Decade of Action.

With less than three weeks left for the high-level meeting and in order to ensure that a strong political declaration is adopted at the meeting, Shahid appointed his Chef de Cabinet Ambassador Naidu to lead the negotiations on a new draft text.

Sources said that for more than a decade, Russia had been playing a constructive and leading role at the United Nations on the Global Road Safety agenda. Yet through its invasion of Ukraine, which has been condemned by the majority of the UN General Assembly, Moscow forfeited any credibility to lead on a major issue of global public health, the sources at the UN said.

The WEOG countries refused to engage on any elements of a draft text that were previously used by the Russian and Cote d'Ivoire co-facilitators. Under these circumstances, Member States had already given up hope, feeling that a political declaration on a process as non-political as road safety could be held up because of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Within a few days, a new draft text was circulated among Member States and with just three informal meetings and a lot of deft negotiations behind the scenes with all the crucial delegations including Russia and Ukraine it was ensured that the silence on the text was not broken by 6 pm on June 27 and a final text was agreed upon by Member States.

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