In Havana, Cuba, on February 11, 2020, within the framework of the XXVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, Ministers and High Government Authorities endorsed the implementation of the regional and global conventions on higher education adopted by the UNESCO General Conference at its 40th meeting: “supporting the work carried out in this regard by the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC), through the relevant instruments of the Ibero-American Knowledge Area” , according to the said Declaration.

Accordingly, the 19 Member States present undertake to promote the ratification of these instruments in order to facilitate the recognition of diplomas and the academic and professional mobility of graduates in the Ibero-American Area, in the context of the internationalization of higher education. The document makes particular mention of digital higher education as a contribution to university activity.

Furthermore, the authorities recommend promoting strategic and budgetary actions to encourage innovation in higher education institutions, thus favoring the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as for example through the dissemination of the same in university curricula.

This meeting was convened by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education of Andorra, the Ministry of Higher Education of Cuba and the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) at the University 2020 Conference.

 New publication on higher education and SDG
On 10 February 2020, during the inauguration of this ministerial meeting, the IESALC launched its most recent report entitled Contribution of higher education to the sustainable development goals: analytical framework (2020), the preliminary version of which seeks to encourage the study and commitment of higher education institutions to the SDG, both through training and through research and extension: «The IESALC wants to contribute to favoring that the number of institutions of higher education (IES) that commit to the SDGs increase, especially in developing countries where the conditions to do so in practice can turn this commitment into a difficult ambition to achieve.»

This is the second publication of the IESALC Working Papers series, designed to disseminate the priority themes of the Institute, the only one in the United Nations system that is specialized with the main goal of contributing to the improvement of higher education in the member states.