Several Heads of State and some 150 ministers and delegates from all 195 UNESCO member states gathered in Paris on Tuesday at the 37th session of the General Conference of UNESCO to design its development strategy for the next eight years.

The Conference is also expected to confirm another four-year term for Irina Bokova as director-general who was nominated for a second term by the Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in the meanwhile, to elect a new president of the General Conference.

The session came at a particularly critical time for UNESCO as the organization is in the midst of a major reform, aimed at making UNESCO more relevant, more effective and more performing in response to global challenges to peace and development.

Opened on Tuesday at the headquarters in Paris, participants will use the 15-day meeting to approve a program that reinforces the reformof the organization andgives shape to the policies needed to achievethe sustainable development goals that will guide the international communityin the coming years. It will also be asked to approve an expenditure plan of 507 million US dollars for UNESCO for the next two years.

The highlights of this session include a leader's forum to be attended by Laura Chinchilla, President of Costa Rica, Moncef Marzuki, President of Tunisia, and some high-level government representatives, to discuss the post-2015 international development agenda in the areas of education, science, culture and communication, and the first BRICS-UNESCO Ministerial Consultation Meeting on Education which will group five education ministers from the BRICS countries to step up their efforts to strengthen cooperation in educational domain.