How do commitees evaluate candidates from foreign / unknown universities?
I work in a European institute and we get a fair number of applicants from Middle and East Asian countries for PhD positions. It became obvious rather quickly that grades, curriculum, prestige etc. are basically incomparable. In fact, we only took these into account when we know the country of origin very well. 

Instead, we put quite some weight on individual skillsets, what undergraduate research project applicants had done, whether their studies fit well with what we are doing, and letters of recommendation.

In other words, we do not take anything on your list into account, with the sole exception of the opportunity to do research: if a candidate hasn't done any independent research and we do not know how to interpret their grades etcetera, then we do not have enough information to make an informed decision. These candidates could be really good but we're unfortunately not in a position to determine that.

This works because we typically know pretty well what kind of students we are looking for; we are not selecting for the US-type Masters-PhD structure, these students immediately start with their PhD projects.