States Parties adopt the first work programme for the UNESCO Global Convention on Higher Education

The extraordinary session of the Intergovernmental Conference of the States Parties to the Global Convention convened for this purpose on 7 March 2024 at UNESCO Headquarters, bringing together the 28 States Parties, 74 observer States and 17 organizations. The milestone event, chaired by Stig Arne Skjerven of Norway, also marked one year into the entry into force of this first United Nations treaty in higher education of a global scope.

“The Global Convention has the power to reshape education on a global scale. Recognition must be for all”, highlighted Ms Simona-Mirela Niculescu, President of the UNESCO General Conference, in urging Member States to ratify the convention and ensure the fair, transparent and non-discriminatory recognition of qualifications for all.

The adoption of the work program comes amid an-ever changing higher education landscape, characterized by expansion, massification, diversification and digitalization. The latest data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) points to enrollments having rapidly doubled in the last two decades to reach 254 million students and mobility having tripled to reach 6.4 million students. 

“The challenge in the decade ahead will be both to ensure universal access to quality and affordable higher education and to ensure fair and transparent recognition of qualifications for all,” explained Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education. “The ambitious work program that has been prepared by the working group of States Parties, with the support of the Secretariat, sets out to do just that.”

The working group of States Parties convened for three sessions in the last quarter of 2023 to agree on the work program. It was chaired by Gonzalo Baroni Boces, National Director of Education at the Ministry of Education and Culture in Uruguay and President of the regional Buenos Aires Convention Committee. 

The work programme focuses on four key areas – the development of operational guidelines for the Global Convention, a recommendation on the relationship between the Global Convention and regional conventions, research and capacity development as well as advocacy and communications. The work programme will run until June 2025, when the next ordinary session of the Intergovernmental Conference of the States Parties takes place. 

The research agenda has two main components – quality assurance, including transnational education, and the recognition of refugee qualifications. To inform UNESCO’s work on the former, a side meeting on transnational higher education took place, bringing together stakeholders from governments, universities, and quality assurance agencies. Deborah Adair, President of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies, provided the keynote for this session, focusing on adapting to change, assuring quality and building trust on outcomes as the key ingredients for overcoming challenges linked to transnational higher education.

On the margins of the conference, UNESCO also brought together the heads of the four regional convention committees and president of the Intergovernmental Conference to share developments, priorities and chart the way forward for further cooperation. UNESCO’s regional conventions are implemented in complementarity with the Global Convention, catering to the specificities of their regions, and the involvement of their governing structures is also foreseen in the implementation of the work programme.

The vast majority of States Parties to the Global Convention (26 out of 28) are also States Parties to one of more regional recognition conventions. Together they host one fourth of the world’s 6.4 million internationally mobile students.

• Global Convention on Higher Education
• Work programme for this global treaty