Although the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) was a significant international achievement, its adoption requires analysis and interpretation in terms of the possibilities and limitations of multilateral cooperation. The international movement for children's rights can only be conceived as the result of a system of multilateral education, which from its beginning in the late nineteenth century was shaped by interrelationships among governments and international and transnational non-governmental organizations. The development of international commitments is traced, from tightly-bounded prescriptions concerning children's rights to international community insistence that the survival, protection and development of children are universal development imperatives integral to human progress.