In the Convention on the Rights of the Child claims regarding what a child is, and what the rights of this child are, are put forward as universal claims. The call for universality might be said to be crucial for the value of the convention – it is as the common voice of the global society the convention upholds its legitimacy and has potentiality to be an instrument of change. However, cultural, political and economical circumstances in a society will always be most significant for how the rights of the convention is received and incorporated in that society. The universal claim of the convention will therefore meet particular claims originating from the context of a certain society. In a first part of the paper the meeting point between universality and particularity will be elaborated as construction sites for how the child and its rights are understood in policy and society, by drawing on theory of right (Bobbio 1996, Benhabib 2000). A second part of the paper will thereafter give an example of how the child, the rights of the child and the responsibility of educational institutions for upholding and developing rights of children, are constructed in the meeting point between universality and particularity in Swedish educational policy.

An elaboration of how theory of right might be used in research on children's rights can provide useful insights for the area of research.