On the 23rd of November 2018 at the Nikkei Hall in Tokyo, Japan, Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa, President of the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection, received from Hiroo Saionji, President of the GOI Peace Foundation, the international award granted yearly for the work or influence of a person for developing a sustainable peaceful world.
Created in 1999 by Mrs. Masami Saionji, the GOI Peace Foundation promotes dialogue and initiatives for peace. Its philosophy and action are based in particular on Mount Fuji’s “declaration for all life on earth” which lays down the principles of a global responsibility for the construction of a peaceful and sustainable world in the twenty-first century.
Since 2000, this international award has been recognizing notorious personalities such as Bill Gates, Oscar Arias Sánchez or the environmentalist Lester Brown.
In 2018, it’s a whole life commitment of Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa for the protection of the environment that the GOI Peace wanted to reward.
Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa described this in Her speech, explaining Her intuition as a mother at the outset of this commitment, an intuition that was later relayed by the action of her Foundation. If this work is perceivable on the field, She acknowledges its insufficiency regarding the magnitude of the challenge. “What is essential, however, is to contribute to the emergence of a different world – a world based on cooperation, in which the responsibility for environmental protection is shared by all, requiring equal effort from all of us,” She said in Her speech.
She insisted “In regards to the immense challenge of protecting the environment, a task which involves all citizens, education should come before all other means and considerations(…) Educating children means planning for the future, and preparing children for the world they will live in. It also means helping to shape the world, which will be theirs to take care of.
In the face of urgency, «it would be more beneficial and effective to give proper education to our children, instill in them another culture, and foster a different relationship with the world, and towards others, She added.
This engagement for children education that Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa is defending on a daily basis with Her Foundation brings an echo concordant to the values of the GOI Peace Foundation. Both Foundations started in 2014 a cooperation that is concretized by schools twinning in Japan and Morocco and an experience sharing for the protection of the environment. This is illustrated by the linkage between the students of the Green Belt Echo-School in Rabat and those of Omori School in Tokyo that Her Royal Highness visited the day before.
“I am a daughter of Al Maghrib, or the Kingdom of the Setting Sun, who has come to the land of the Rising Sun, to receive this Award. Between our two countries, the sun never goes down.I hope that eternal light will be the light of everlasting peace, which we dedicate along with this Award – to the children of our two countries.” She concluded.