On May 11-12, 2016 the first meeting of the Drafting Committee of the Global convention on recognition of higher education qualifications that was created according to the solution of the 38th General conference of UNESCO (November 2015) has taken place. The meeting took place in the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris and has united experts of 23 countries, which represented all regions of the world (Australia and Oceania – 1, Asia – 6, America – 5, Europe - 7). The representative of the Russian Federation – the referent of the International department of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation A.A. Koropchenko - also participated in the meeting session.

The main goal of the Drafting Committee is to develop the text of the Global Convention by the end of 2017 and present it for further discussion. The preparatory work in this direction is conducted by UNESCO within the last several years. The following convention is urged to unite 6 regional conventions that were signed at the end of the last century, including the so-called Lisbon convention of 1997 – the only legal instrument of the Bologna process.

The expediency of the Global convention development is caused by new tendencies in the education sphere. The modern processes of internationalization and diversification of higher education, the development of new technologies and academic mobility makes clear that there is a need of development of a legal and regulatory instrument that will promote cross-border recognition of qualifications for countries involved in the globalization process.

Within the last meeting of the Drafting Committee the preliminary report on preparation of the Global convention was discussed, and the road map has been developed. It was decided that before the second meeting in September, 2016 the experts have to give their suggestions on different sections of the future document, which will reflect a modern approach to education as a lifelong learning process and to rely on the terminology that was developed during the preparation of the updated regional conventions.