Theresa Frey, Abass Isiaka, and Yann Lebeau School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic was about to severely disrupt international mobility when UNESCO launched in November 2019 a plan to redefine that mobility as a global project. The Global Convention for the Recognition of Qualifications in Higher Education (hereafter GC) adopted at the 40th General Assembly was indeed “the first UN legally binding standard-setting instrument for global higher education” but is it the game changer its promoters announced towards a global transparent and non-discriminatory recognition of qualifications? The GC’s history dates back to the 1970s, when UNESCO first proposed the idea of a global framework to regulate academic mobility and unify recognition systems worldwide. Eventually, six regional conventions were adopted instead to regulate recognition at regional levels, covering the areas of Latin America and the Caribbean (1974), the Arab and European States bordering the Mediterranean (1976), the Arab States (1978), Europe (1979), Africa (1981), and Asia and the Pacific (1983).

These “first generation” regional conventions were subsequently revised to reflect a changing global landscape of study mobility and are known in their new format as the Lisbon Convention (developed with the Council of Europe in 1997), the Tokyo Convention (2011), the Addis Ababa Convention (2014), the Buenos Aires Convention (2019), and the Arab States Convention adopted in Paris in 2022. Regional conventions were designed to address the implications of trends such as the massification of higher education, the diversification of educational offerings, shifts in learning paradigms, the acceleration of internationalisation and emerging transnationalisation of higher education, as well as the steady rise of transborder professional mobility (UNESCO-IELSAC, 2023).

The GC, therefore, appears to complement instruments already championing the fair recognition of foreign higher education qualifications by universalising their principles and extending them to non-traditional learning modes (e.g. Transnational Education). The GC also offers UNESCO an opportunity to align its Higher Education (hereafter HE) agenda with growing calls for a decolonial and more sustainable internationalisation. And finally, the GC is being promoted as a standard-setting instrument that recognises new challenges, such as the forced internationalisation of HE induced by population displacements and the integration of qualified refugees into the labour markets of host countries.

A closer attention to the timing of the adoption of the GC questions the image of linearity and complementarity of the two types of conventions promoted by UNESCO. One might wonder why UNESCO deemed it appropriate to develop and adopt a global convention when some of the “second generation” regional conventions had yet to be adopted and ratified. In fact, with the exception of the Lisbon Convention of 1997, framing recognition across the European Higher Education Area and North America, revised regional conventions were still in their infancy and facing mistrust, if not resistance, from member states. The question then is: why did UNESCO push ahead with a global recognition agenda instead of investing in the consolidation of regional instruments largely identical in wording? 

To address this question, we returned to how the GC came to be, and to why dominant players (in Europe in particular) in the international HE field joined forces to support the introduction of yet another layer of regulation to a world already tailored to their own economic and symbolic profit. 

International student mobility in a world of polycrisis

Over the past three decades, international student mobility has experienced significant changes and shifts under the deregulation, diversification, and massification of higher education, but also as a result of rising environmental, political, and economic crises challenging the neoliberal economy and ideology of mobility.

In this context, the unilateral flow and attached celebratory narrative of mobility is challenged by scholars and trends alike, in the Global South in particular. New dynamics, particularly the regionalisation of mobility, begin to mitigate the ecological toll of over 7 million globally mobile students and advance the prospect of more sustainable and equitable regional higher education cooperation. Regional initiatives, particularly in South America, also seek to disrupt long-standing South–North dependencies and reimagine mobility beyond the gravitational pull of elite Northern institutions.

In today’s polycrisis context, dotted by protracted wars, climate emergencies, authoritarianism, neo-nationalism and growing displacement, rethinking ISM is not only timely but necessary. As the boundaries between higher education mobility and migration become increasingly porous, the need to develop sustainable frameworks for understanding and supporting mobility becomes ever more urgent. But is a Global Convention the answer?

Meanings and Expectations

The GC adopted in 2019 has so far been ratified by 38 countries. At the heart of this rather slow ratification process is the interpretive work of various actors, including national ministries, universities, international organisations, and stakeholder organisations, each with contrasting interests in the convention and its proposed scope. The expression of these differences is seen in UNESCO’s self-presentation as a “laboratory of ideas”, a global public sphere drawing on tools like the GC, conceived as inclusive discursive spaces shaped by both expert knowledge and member state consensus.

UNESCO highlighted three of the GC’s ten objectives in advancing its agenda for inclusive internationalisation, namely establishing a fair, transparent, and equitable global framework for qualification recognition, promoting a “culture of quality assurance” within HE systems, and ensuring “recognition for all,” including refugees and displaced persons (UNESCO, 2019). Interestingly, this implicit critique of global HE market dynamics and alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) faces incredulity and reluctance from among the Global South countries it is aiming to primarily benefit. This is because the inclusivity gloss of the agenda tends to mask the tangible implications of the norm-setting instrument for national policies. While some Member States support and promote (through their early ratification) the Convention as a tool to expand graduates’ access to international labour markets, reduce brain drain, and integrate displaced populations, others simply do not see its immediate interest, are wary of models from the Global North (such as the European Lisbon Convention or ENQA) seeping through a highly permeable UNESCO, see in the GC a facilitator of transnational education initiatives from the Global North, or are reluctant to further open their HE and labour market opportunities. 

This was evident in our interviews with officials from TĂĽrkiye, Jordan, and Zambia and with regional UNESCO officials. For example, Turkish officials stated that ratifying the Lisbon Recognition Convention (LRC) and the Tokyo Convention had already integrated their country into a global higher education framework aligned with its internationalisation goals. Ratifying the GC was therefore not a policy priority. For Jordan, the decision was more complex. Yet to ratify a regional convention perceived as equating its qualifications with those neighbouring  countries it does not recognise academically, the country sees the GC as a more valuable route to the global visibility and legitimacy of its qualifications and is  further engaged in its ratification (Interviews, 2024). Meanwhile, in some regional UNESCO offices, officials warned that discounting regional conventions in favour of a single global framework could reinforce existing centre-periphery dynamics.

Complex intertwined influential factors involving voluntary financial contributions, strategic appointments and active diplomatic promotion from dominant State Parties and non-state actors such as regional agencies and organisations (e.g. the EU) complicates the actual agency of member States despite their prerogative over higher education. This is something important for UNESCO to consider. While offering long-sought possibilities for inter-regional collaboration and mobility (particularly within the Global South) and providing an alternative to fragmented and unequal pathways of post-mobility integration into labour markets, the GC also risks reproducing global hierarchies by allowing influences across its policy cycle from formulation to implementation.

In a rapidly changing world of ISM where international league tables and private supra-national accreditation agencies increasingly act as proxies for quality and recognition of programmes and institutions, the GC is as much a political and symbolic instrument as it is a policy tool. Its global appeal lies in its promise of inclusive and sustainable regulation of internationalisation, but its adoption and implementation remain deeply rooted in geopolitical, institutional, and historical inequalities. Understanding the GC, therefore, requires not only attention to its stated aims (or what UNESCO and its state parties seek to achieve with it) but also to the complex interplay of meaning, expectation, and power that underpins its emergence as a global education norm.

References

UNESCO. (2019). Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education.

UNESCO. (n.d.). What is the Global Convention on higher education? | UNESCO. Retrieved February 9, 2025, from

Author Bios

Theresa Frey

Theresa Frey is a PhD student at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia and an adjunct faculty member at State University of New York (SUNY), Westchester Community College. Theresa has been a higher education professional since 2008. Theresa’s research has focused on international education, refugee education, and justice-centred education practices through art and creative approaches for refugee and migrant children. In addition, Theresa’s PhD research focuses on decolonising and futures practices of youth education activists in New York City, United States, through ethnography and participatory action research.

Abass Isiaka

Abass B. Isiaka (PhD) is a Senior Research Associate in Widening Participation at the Centre for Higher Education Research, Practice, Policy and Scholarship (CHERPPS) at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. As an SRA at CHERPPS, he works on a range of evaluation and research projects informing the University’s inclusive policy and widening access and participation for underrepresented and/or disadvantaged groups such as those with specific learning differences (SpLDs), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Yann Lebeau

Yann Lebeau is Professor of Higher Education Research, and Head of the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia. He joined the School in 2007 after holding teaching and research positions in France (Brest, Bordeaux), in Nigeria (Ibadan) and at the UK’s Open University. His research interests are in the sociology of higher education communities and where higher education, policy and social change intersect. He has done extensive empirical research on the University/society nexus and on questions of international policy transfers, internationalisation, academic mobility, in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and in Europe. Yann is a member of several education and development research networks. He has been involved for over 20 years in the design and delivery of research training and research capacity building programmes worldwide, notably with the Open Society Foundations and with the Council for the Development of Social Sciences in Africa (CODESRIA).