This article examines some important aspects of the current international debate regarding how to apply concepts of children's rights to child labor. It begins with the question of what, and whose, ideas about children and childhood provide the foundation for globalized children's rights norms, looking into concerns that international child labor policies may be unjustly dominated by European and North American values and ideas at the expense of more representative worldviews. From this perspective, it then reviews the three main international conventions dealing with child labor, discussing certain ideological and strategic differences between them and tracing in their history a gradual movement away from the dominance of Northern ethnocentrism and toward more culturally inclusive and flexible formulations of children's rights standards.
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