Part I of families with children pursuant to Article 37 of Convention on Children’s Rights – i.e. as a last resort and for the shortest time possible. Likewise, the recommendations on detention of persons applying for refugee status issued by the Committee of Ministers 16 April 2003235 emphasise that detaining juveniles seeking the refugee status should be the option of last resort and applied for the shortest time possible. Juveniles should not be, against their will, separated from their parents or other legal or customary guardians. The Committee recommends that if juveniles must be detained, they may not be housed in prison conditions. Such persons must be released from detention as quickly as possible, and they must be provided separate accommodations. The Committee also recommends special solutions within closed facilities that are suitable for families with children, as well as alternative accommodations that safeguard proceedings without entailing deprivation of liberty, such as care homes or foster homes for unaccompanied juveniles applying for the refugee status236. According to the NMPT, regardless of how well the juveniles are looked after during their stay in a CDC, such stays, in every instance, have a very negative impact on their psychological condition and their normal functioning thereafter. 2. Access to psychological evaluation The key role of psychological evaluations in the process of identifying victims of torture is made clear in the “Istanbul Protocol – Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”237, which states that Psychological evaluations provide useful evidence for medico-legal examinations, political asylum applications, establishing conditions under which false confessions may have been obtained, understanding regional practices of torture, identifying the therapeutic needs of victims and as testimony in human rights investigations. Rec 2003)/5. from: Detention of migrant children in Poland, report on the implementation of international and national standards concerning detention of foreign children, Halina Nieć Legal Aid Center, 25 March 2011. 237 Publication of the United Nation, drafted in 1999 by a group of experts (mainly doctors, lawyers and psychologists) that contains, inter alia, guidelines on how to identify and document cases of torture or other cruel treatment or punishment for the needs of criminal investigations. The Istanbul Protocol is an official UN document; while it is not binding (it’s so-called soft international law), its application is recommended by the UN General Assembly as well as the UN Human Rights Commission / UN Human Rights Council. 235 236 77