561 Advocacy for comprehensive road safety law in Bangladesh

<h3>Background</h3> Bangladesh faces nearly 25,000 road deaths annually, making it leading cause of death among children and adults (WHO, 2018). To achieve SDG 3.6 and 11.2, government has enacted Road Transport Act (RTA) 2018, which focuses on transport and vehicles but does not include evidence-based safety measures in line with the Safe System Approach. <h3>Objective</h3> To identify potential policy options and an evidence-based advocacy tools that could address present gaps/problems and then comparing those options to choose most effective, and feasible one. And this paper aims to share the advocacy efforts by Dhaka Ahsania Mission [DAM] to achieve an enactment of a comprehensive road safety law align to Safe System Approach. <h3>Policy analysis: </h3> GOB has enacted RTA 2018, however, the road safety issues are fully absence in the Act and the road crash is not reducing but increasing day by day. The policy analysis reviews the various policies through the lens of the Five – E approach to identify gaps of the policies and suggest way forwards. <h3>Policy Implication</h3> Mapping of stakeholders and institutions that hold different mandates on transport and road safety has also helped DAM to find allies. DAM conducted extensive advocacy with identified policy makers and shared policy brief on comprehensive road safety law. Through advocacy the highest decision makers, Secretary of Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges; Chairman of Standing Committee of concern ministry; Chairman of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority have been acknowledge the importance of comprehensive road safety law in Bangladesh. The concern ministry’s Secretary has willing to work on this issue after the national election. <h3>Conclusion</h3> As road crashes are preventable, therefore, it is recommended in policy brief that a comprehensive road safety law following ‘Safe System Approach’ be enacted. Though there is a big challenge that policy makers are not interested to reform any other law for road safety as RTA 2018 is already here and yet not fully implemented. DAM has just started a discussion with policy makers on comprehensive road safety law through its strong advocacy and has planned for conducting robust advocacy by engaging students, youth, drivers, journalists.