Validation of foreign studies and degrees

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The Validation or recognition of foreign studies and degrees is the process whereby a competent authority in one country formally recognises the value of a qualification from a foreign country.^[1] This can entail total or partial validation of foreign university and non-university studies, degrees and other qualifications. Particularly within Europe, this is covered by a number of international conventions and agreements.

The first generation of recognition conventions was developed under the auspices of UNESCO in the 1970s and 1980s, with conventions covering Latin America and the Caribbean (1974), the Mediterranean (1976), the Arab States (1978), Europe (1979), Africa (1981), and Asia and the Pacific (1983).^[2] These conventions are specifically concerned with recognition of qualifications rather than equivalence – there is no attempt to build frameworks with automatic equivalence of qualifications.^[3] This first generation of conventions has been built on by second generation conventions, starting with Lisbon (1997) covering Europe and now including the Asia-Pacific region (Tokyo, 2011) and Africa (Addis Ababa, 2014). A major change with the more recent conventions is a shift in favour of recognition, with the burden being to show substantial differences.^[4]

The Lisbon Convention entered into force in 1999,^[5] the Tokyo Convention in 2018^[6] and the Addis Ababa Convention in 2019.^[7] A new regional convention covering Latin America and the Caribbean was adopted in Buenos Aires in 2019 but has not, as of February 2020, entered into force.^[8] The first recognition treaty with a global scope, the Global Convention on the Recognition of Higher Education Qualifications, was adopted by the 40th session of UNESCO's General Conference in November 2019.^[9][10]