Operationalising children's rights: Lessons from research

This article considers ways in which the implementation of children's rights can be measured in law, policy and practice. It identifies best practice and lessons to be learnt when undertaking the process of auditing the implementation of children's rights. It draws on the author's experience of four different research projects whose task was to measure the extent to which children's rights were being protected and promoted. The article highlights the value of rights-based research, which attempts to operationalise children's rights by measuring their practical implementation with regard to international standards including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It sets out the lessons to be learnt from such research, including how to develop appropriate and effective benchmarks, how to maximise existing standards to this end, and how to apply them in line with the general principles of the CRC.