The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child established children’s right to an education which promotes human rights, and established a duty on states to ensure children are informed about their rights. Taken together this provides a warrant for introducing some form of child rights education (CRE), that is, an education which teaches children about their rights and enables them to assume the role of rights holder. UNICEF has recently adopted CRE as a key principle for its education work in those countries where it conducts its fund-raising activities. This involves a transition from Development Education towards CRE and as part of this process UNICEF commissioned the Centre for Children's Rights in Queen's University Belfast to undertake a base-line survey exploring the extent to which aspects of CRE are already present in the education systems of 26 countries, including 19 in Europe. The research was designed around the following questions:

1. To what extent are countries with a National Committee presence implementing CRE?
2. Where CRE implementation is advanced, what factors have supported this process?
3. Where CRE implementation is not advanced, what factors are hindering implementation?

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