Malcolm Adiseshiah
From 1 to 16 November 1945 a United Nations Conference was convened in London for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization (ECO/CONF). In the conference, a new organization was created to establish the “intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind” and thus prevent the outbreak of another world war. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded by thirty-seven countries. Its Constitution to promote collaboration between member states in the fields of education, science and culture was signed on 16 November 1945 and came into force on 4 November 1946. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President of India, was a former student of Adiseshiah’s father. He made a referral to Sir Julian Huxley, then Director-General of UNESCO, who invited Adiseshiah to the organization in 1948. He was posted as Deputy Director of the department of exchange of persons. In that capacity Adiseshiah signed the UNESCO Fellowship letter in 1949 to M. S. Swaminathan, eminent scientist and administrator, to pursue research at the Agricultural University in Wageningen, the Netherlands which was the starting point of his illustrious career.
UNESCO-CEPES
On 21 September 1972, as the only intergovernmental Centre for Higher Education in Europe region, North America and Israel, UNESCO European Centre for Higher Education (Centre Européen pour l’Enseignement Supérieur – CEPES) was established in Bucharest.
The early mission of the CEPES was to encourage cooperation, to disseminate information, and to research modern trends in higher education within the Europe Region. In the early 1990s, with the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the role of UNESCO-CEPES extended its round has been broader.
on this endeavour, the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme constituted "a major breakthrough with regard to the reinforcement of inter-university co-operation at the sub-regional, regional and interregional levels as a means to improve the quality in higher education as well as to strengthen national capabilities for higher level training and research in the developing countries."