Morocco Addresses Motorcyclist Safety at UN Amid Record Road Deaths

Rabat – Morocco’s Transport and Logistics Minister, Abdessamad Kayouh, told the United Nations on Monday that road safety sits at the heart of the country’s sustainable development strategy, describing motorcyclist protection as a national priority Morocco has taken to the world stage.

The minister’s remarks come weeks after Morocco’s own road safety agency confirmed that 2025 was the deadliest year on Moroccan roads on record, driven largely by motorcyclists.

Speaking at UN headquarters at the donors’ conference for the United Nations Road Safety Fund (UNRSF), Kayouh said Morocco has made road safety “an important element of its sustainable development efforts.” As chair of the Fund’s advisory council, noted the minister, the kingdom continues to support its mission of saving lives through international cooperation.

Motorcyclists are among the most vulnerable road users, which is why Morocco has made their safety a national priority, he said.

Kayouh further pointed to the International Mohammed VI Prize for Road Safety, launched at the fourth Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Marrakech in February 2025, as well as a Road Safety Village set up at that same conference to promote helmet use and raise awareness among motorcyclists, alongside government-backed helmet distribution efforts.

Co-organized by France, Jamaica, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety and the UN Office of the Regional Commissions in New York, the conference is seeking to raise 10.6 million dollars to sustain and expand UNRSF’s work through the second half of the Decade of Action for Road Safety.

It was held alongside a UN General Assembly high-level meeting on road safety, with the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy, Jean Todt, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in attendance, and in the presence of Morocco’s permanent representative to the UN, Omar Hilale.

In Morocco, the numbers tell a starker story than the one delivered in New York. Provisional NARSA figures show 4,577 road deaths in 2025, a 25.5% increase, with 10,333 individuals seriously injured, alongside a notable rise in urban victims.

Two and three wheeled vehicles users accounted for 2,060 of those deaths: 1,983 among two-wheelers and 77 among three-wheelers. This represents 45% of total fatalities.

Pedestrians and two and three wheeled vehicle users together made up more than 70% of all road deaths. The increase in fatalities among motorcyclists users specifically reached 526 additional deaths, a 34.3% rise. Injury-causing accidents also climbed to 160,347, up 12.7% from 2024.

The ministry has acknowledged that road safety policy needs to account for newer mobility risks, including the growth of electric scooters and home-delivery driving.

NARSA has expanded its national radar network to 1,140 units and continued a vehicle-fleet renewal program backed by 143 million dirhams. The ministry has also described discussions around a National Road Safety Strategy for 2026-2030 as a major step in consolidating road safety efforts.

The gap between Morocco’s diplomatic messaging and its domestic data does not necessarily undercut the substance of what Kayouh described.

The Mohammed VI Prize, the Marrakech-launched Road safety Village and Morocco’s role chairing the UNSRF advisory council are real initiatives, and NARSA’s own figures show the state investing in enforcement infrastructure even as the toll worsens.

As Morocco pitches itself internationally as a partner capable of helping the UN Fund “save more lives,” the sharpest test of that credibility remains its own roads, where 2025 ended up being the country’s worst year yet.