In connection with the establishment of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the UN established the consideration of children as non-autonomous varies with a need for special rights management that is outside the framework of human rights. In 2011, the UN issued the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a document with guidelines for how companies should work with respect for human rights. Through a qualitative content analysis, this essay implements a critical review of how the guidelines relate to the UN's established view of children and their special needs. With the support of research on children's rights, inclusion and positive freedom, an analysis tool is formed with a yardstick for children's rights in freedom, which is used to examine whether the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights take into account the distinction that exists between children and adults through a rights perspective.

The study indicates that consideration of the distinction takes place to a certain but not sufficient extent. An interesting aspect of the result is that children are categorized as one of several minority groups, which contradicts the UN's previous establishment of children as a unique group and non-autonomous beings. This also paves the way for interesting future studies, for example to see if the contradiction is a pattern or a singular deviation.