29 June 2011, Buenos Aires, Argentina. UNITAR Executive Director Carlos Lopes and UNESCO IIEP Executive Director Khalil Mahshi met with the Minister of Education of Argentina Professor Sileoni yesterday. The meeting was held in the framework of Mr. Lopes’ membership in the Executive Committee of UNESCO’s International Institute for Education Planning. Mr. Lopes who serves on the Governing Board of UNESCO’s IIEP as Secretary-General’s representative has travelled to Argentina this week with a view to taking part in the 37th session of the Executive Committee of the Board.

International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) is UNESCO’s training arm established in 1963 and tasked with developing capacities of member countries to plan and manage their educational systems. Training represents IIEP’s main mass of activities complemented by educational policy and methodologies research and knowledge sharing, as well as technical assistance programmes. Mr. Lopes has been contributing to the governance of UNESCO’s International Institute since 2007, by providing advice and area-specific expertise that he has developed over the years while promoting UNDP’s capacity building efforts, and particularly providing leadership for the UN Institute for Training and Research. UNITAR's mission, roles, and functioning are, in many ways, analogous to those of the IIEP, however, spanning over a wider range of thematic areas and audience categories  as mandated by UN member states. Complementing each other's work, both Institutes are facing similar challenges of better responding to the needs of their respective beneficiaries in diverse geographic areas.

With its headquarters in Paris, IIEP also has a regional office in Buenos Aires, that was opened in the context of a rapid transformation taking place within the educational systems of Latina American countries and with the purpose of providing a better targeted response and promoting the development of “a quality education for everyone”.