Organizational responses to the Convention on the Rights of the Child: international lessons for child welfare organizations.

This article describes ways several large, international, child-focused institutions have responded to the nearly universal ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Although governments (with the exception of the United States and Somalia) are the actual signatories to the CRC, non-governmental organizations played an active role in drafting the CRC, and continue to monitor its implementation and integrate it into their own work. Many have expanded their own human rights/child rights program approaches in recognition of the CRC's principles. Children's participation in organizations, perhaps the most radical element of the CRC, is a challenge to all groups.