Commitment to fair qualifications recognition is growing

On 22 May 2026, Slovenia became the 41st state party to the UNESCO Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education, marking a significant milestone in the journey toward truly global academic mobility.

This achievement is particularly meaningful. The global convention required 20 states parties to enter into force, as it did in March 2023.

The growth from 20 to more than 40 state parties in less than three years shows the international community’s growing commitment to fair qualifications recognition as a fundamental right and as a catalyst for human and social development.

Reflecting the growing internationalisation of higher education, this growth also confirms a strong desire to broaden and deepen the cooperation already in place through regional recognition conventions and take this to a truly global stage.

Diverse parties

What makes this milestone remarkable is not just the number; it is also the extraordinary diversity of state parties involved. From Europe to Asia and the Pacific, from Latin America to Africa, the global convention now represents a genuine cross-section of the world’s higher education landscape.

Recent ratifications exemplify this diversity. Uzbekistan ratified the global convention in December 2025, becoming the first Central Asian country to join the global convention.

As Uzbekistan modernises its higher education system, its participation opens new pathways for students throughout Central Asia and beyond.

Uzbekistan has become one of the world’s largest hosts of international branch campuses. The country’s strategic location along the historic Silk Road could in the future be complemented by its role in facilitating modern academic exchange.

Earlier in 2025, the Republic of Korea ratified the global convention, bringing into the fold a higher education system that has one of the highest tertiary completion rates in the world.

The Republic of Korea recently reached its target of hosting 300,000 international students, nearly two years ahead of schedule, demonstrating remarkable growth in capacity to welcome and support international students.

These developments strengthen the momentum for the implementation of the global convention in Asia and the Pacific and show how advanced, technology-driven systems facilitate recognition.

Zambia’s early 2026 accession further strengthened the global convention’s impact on a continent where academic mobility is essential for development.

Having already ratified the regional Addis convention, Zambia now benefits from both regional and global frameworks that create pathways for its students and academics to pursue opportunities worldwide and also to bring their knowledge and skills home.

Through international cooperation, these instruments further strengthen the foundations of a global higher education policy space, as envisioned in UNESCO’s recently-released Transforming Higher Education roadmap.

Now, with Slovenia, a state party to the Lisbon recognition convention, also ratifying the global convention, we see a global ecosystem of higher education cooperation, solidarity and mobility coming into place.

From principle to practice

For too long, qualified individuals have faced barriers that are unrelated to their competence. The global convention changes this fundamental equation in several critical ways.

First, it ensures that every person has the right to fair, transparent, non-discriminatory and timely assessment of their qualifications.

The global convention establishes a framework where the burden of proof does not rest on the individual to prove identical equivalence but rather is placed on recognition authorities who must establish legitimate substantial differences that justify a denial of recognition.

Crucially, it also highlights specific pathways for refugees and displaced persons to have qualifications assessed and recognised even without complete documentation.

This matters enormously given current displacement crises.
The UNESCO Qualifications Passport further exemplifies this commitment, as it serves as a universal multilateral tool helping refugees and vulnerable migrants access education and employment by recognising their qualifications even when official documentation is incomplete or missing.

Second, the convention addresses modern realities that earlier frameworks could not anticipate. This includes provisions for cross-border higher education (often labelled as transnational education), online learning and the recognition of partial studies.

It also represents a critical shift away from only thinking about education inputs (for instance, time spent studying) to placing greater emphasis on learning outcomes and students’ capabilities.

Third, the convention creates implementation mechanisms that transform principles into practice.

The Second Intergovernmental Conference of the States Parties in June 2025, covered by an article in University World News, adopted a set of operational guidelines.

The guidelines are a key practical tool that help higher education institutions, recognition authorities and governments apply the convention’s modern principles, making international cooperation in higher education recognition clearer, fairer and more accessible.

In addition, the conference was a starting point for the work on further guidelines for a) quality assurance, including cross-border higher education, b) recognition of refugees’ and displaced persons’ qualifications, and c) the relationship between global and regional recognition conventions – all aims to be adopted as early as July 2027.

A common question we often meet is whether the global convention will replace UNESCO’s five regional recognition conventions. The answer is no. As commented previously in University World News, regional and global conventions work together, creating a cohesive international framework where each level reinforces the other.

Regional conventions address specific regional contexts, including academic traditions and benefit from strong regional networks for information sharing and capacity building, while the global convention provides the architecture that connects these systems, ensuring students can successfully navigate both regional and inter-regional mobility.

The work continues

Having over 40 states parties represents significant progress, yet the work continues. More than 269 million students are enrolled in higher education, but fewer than 3% of these students participate in international mobility, according to UNESCO’s recently-released Higher Education Global Trends Report.

With approximately 7.3 million internationally mobile students worldwide, with more than half studying outside their home region and this global figure projected to reach up to 10 million by 2030, modernised recognition frameworks have never been more critical.

As UNESCO pushes for inclusion, quality and recognition in global higher education, we must maintain the momentum that has brought us from concept to where we are today. The convention’s impact on bridging the recognition gap is already evident in the millions of individual stories of students pursuing opportunities across borders.

As we welcome Slovenia and look ahead to additional new states parties joining in 2026, we invite more governments, national authorities, recognition bodies and higher education institutions to take advantage of the principles and guidelines of the convention.

Whether your country has already ratified the convention or is still considering it and whether you work in policy or in practice, you have a role to play.

Together, we can ensure that qualifications are recognised fairly and transparently, that mobility is within reach for all those wishing or needing to cross borders and that education creates real opportunities for everyone, in line with Sustainable Development Goal 4.

This is not just about building better recognition systems. Together, we are building bridges between nations, opening doors for millions of students and advancing the fundamental right to education and mobility in our interconnected world.

Stig Arne Skjerven is the chair of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Conference of States Parties of the Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education. He has previously held roles as director of academic affairs at a Norwegian higher education institution, was director of Norway’s ENIC-NARIC office and elected chair of the ENIC Network and was Norway’s deputy permanent representative to UNESCO.

Noah W Sobe is chief of section for higher education at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Prior to this appointment, he had a two-decade career as a professor at Loyola University Chicago. He was previously at UNESCO (2019 to 2022), helping to lead a flagship futures of education initiative. Additionally, he is a past president of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) and a former co-editor of the journal European Education.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.