THE LISBON RECOGNITION CONVENTION: UNESCO'S CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION IN THE 1990S

The article will review developments in the nineties that took a new approach to the recognition of qualifications through the Lisbon Recognition Convention. and highlighted the growing importance of quality assurance in that context. It will further examine how this contributed to placing quality assurance at the heart of the construction of the European Higher Education Area and the Bologna Process. It will review the strengthened links between quality assurance and qualification recognition that make the two interlinked processes central to developing policy frameworks. Links among international organisations play in this arena through UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education, the Global Forum on International Quality Assurance and the UNESCO/OECD Guidelines on Quality Provision in Cross-Border Higher Education and the processes surrounding them will also be explored. Finally, politics and quality in higher education, are proposed as determinants of possible international schemes in a more globalised and interdependent world.