Dr. Abdelhak Azzouzi Receives "Alliance University of Year” Award

The United Nations Chair for the Alliance of Civilizations at Euromed University of Fez was awarded in Prague the prestigious “Alliance University of the Year” prize as part of the 2025 Triple E Awards, organized by the Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities (ACEEU). 

The prize was presented to the Chair’s President, Prof. Abdelhak Azzouzi, founding member and Board Member of Euromed University of Fez, during a gala dinner at the famous Lobkowicz Palace, located within the Prague Castle complex, as part of the Global ACEEU Forum, which brought together over 150 decisionmakers from around the world.

The United Nations Chair for the Alliance of Civilizations was ranked first among hundreds of universities and institutions applying from across the globe.

The Triple E Award represents the first global recognition dedicated to universities' Third Mission — their role beyond teaching and research, in service of otherness, the Alliance of Civilizations, and development.

Organized by ACEEU, the only global accreditation body focused on university engagement and entrepreneurship, this award distinguishes the most innovative and committed establishments in societal transformation.

This is a major international honor for the UN Chair for the Alliance of Civilizations — established in partnership with UNAOC — at a time dominated by tensions, fragilities, and global geopolitical instability.

One cannot speak here of the UNAOC without mentioning its High Representative, Mr. AngelMiguel Moratinos, who is by excellence an emblematic figure of international diplomacy within the United Nations. As the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, his journey is a benchmark model of a human career dedicated to peace and building agreement, through empathy and solidarity among peoples.

The UN program he leads, founded solely on the principles of wisdom and insight, consists in spreading to young people the virtues of cultural pluralism, diversity of beliefs, and sustainable development. For its worst enemies are called radical fundamentalism, exacerbated individualism, and exclusion through racism or hatred. Multiplying programs, summits, and meetings around the world, he is more than ever determined to make hope triumph by calling, wherever he goes, to put human dignity at the heart of all economic, social and political stakes. “It is our humanity that matters,” he ceaselessly proclaims. It is our capital today and our heritage for the future, one that must be preserved and promoted without ever bending in the face of hardship.

The prestigious prize received in Prague is a major event in the life of Euromed University of Fez as well as that of UNAOC. One might even say it is almost unique of its kind in the world. Beyond its factual significance, its symbolic and historical scope will mark minds for a long time. Not only ours, but also those of future generations of leaders, students, and teacherresearchers. Each of them will perpetuate the idea that an alliance for values is what will always give humanity the will to pursue its work of progress, regardless of the obstacles and hostile circumstances. And in this regard, we understand what a virtuous alliance has been sealed between UNAOC and Euromed University of Fez. Both have been engaged for several years now in consolidating the fruitful pathways of peace and happy coexistence among peoples.

In order to give it all the effectiveness and visibility that its mission demands, the United Nations Chair for the Alliance of Civilizations has been endowed with an academic Master’s program “Conflict Management and Alliance of Civilizations”, and a doctoral training program accredited by the Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation. In the same perspective, the Chair’s leaders have made it, on the one hand, a vector of scientific output as shown by the books and journals recently published. And on the other hand, a space for debate where young students from all over the world engage in prospective reflection on the future of societies.

In many respects, nothing could give greater satisfaction than the organization of these activities by the Chair, in perfect convergence and synergy both with Morocco’s peaceful vision — widely praised and attested — and with the strategy of UNAOC of the United Nations, implemented in continuous actions for the promotion of values of mutual understanding and living together.

Peoples today are challenged by globalization, which demands intercultural and interreligious engagement to avoid ruptures, contradictions, passivity, isolation, and egoism. The importance of education and training at all levels is crucial so that the citizens of the world commit to peace. We thus draw a roadmap for building a culturally mixed society based on four aspirations: the encounter of otherness, the sense of difference, the awareness of perspective, and the intelligence of coherence. These fundamental insights must form the core of students’ formation for a harmonious life in a culturally and religiously diverse universe: “Our ‘planetary society’ does not escape from this rampant mixture, and we believe it urgent to prepare ourselves for it, if we want to contribute to its construction in a real and effective way, because we all have the responsibility to intensify efforts to spread the values of dialogue, peace and understanding among different peoples.”

In other words, this education to cultural diversity must connect citizens to the truth in order to be able to live humanly, religiously, and reasonably. The future is common. Binary and explosive visions are very dangerous. They inflame imaginations. And the imagination can become even more formidable than objective reality. There must be an effort to reorder the problems that agitate and organize the dynamics of the two worlds, East and West, assumed to be opposed.

Thus, the Chair aims to be a fertile place of research and debate on the crucial issues of our time. This choice, privileging investment at the heart of the benchmarks of humanistic knowledge in its dual scientific and heuristic dimension, constitutes an appropriate lever to support young generations in their willingness to confront destructive dogmatisms and address the challenges of the future. Created by UNAOC and Euromed University of Fez, this Chair is enriched by new potentials in experience, expertise and innovation.