Biuletyn RPO Materiały nr 68 - Ochrona dzieci a przyszłość ...

Editors’ note 19Defender with the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy which did notmade its presentation at the conference, as well as with the Ministryof Health, from which we did not receive the speech made by the Directorof the Mother and Child Department ready for printing, allowsto get some acquaintance with the position of those ministries on thescope and methods of solving important social and health problems ofchildren.Both scientific events organised by the Human Rights Defender coincidedwith the beginning and the end of the three-month debate onthe document of the Board of Strategic Advisors of the Prime Ministerof the Republic of Poland entitled “Poland 2030. Development Challenges”.TheBulletin of the Human Rights Defender and the White Paperresulting from those conferences allow to look into the issues relatedto children from the perspective of their needs as well as the family,ethical and professional obligations of adults, organisations and publicinstitutions, and state authorities. Such a comprehensive approach tothe issue of protection of children is of utmost importance, as it takesinto account i.a. monitoring of needs, detection and diagnosis of problems,specification and hierarchization of care, prevention, therapeuticand educational tasks on the basis of the results of cost effectivenessanalyses, as well as aiming at improving the access to appropriatecare, treatment and education. Due to the context of demographicfuture, investments in widely understood protection of children isa Polish raison d’état.This publication may add value to the debate on the protection ofchildren and the future of Poland, which consists in the approachfrom the perspective of human rights. Such an approach requiresan objective evaluation of the effects of activities for children carriedout by the responsible institutions and authorities, on the one hand,and puts an emphasis on the necessity to obtain reliable data on thefulfilment of fundamental rights with regard to a specific child, as wellas to the entire population at development age, on the other hand. Theapproach from the perspective of human rights allows to determinewhether the rights of children are violated and which institution is responsiblefor the failure to fulfil the rights included in the Constitutionand international treaties ratified by Poland.The Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the UnitedNations on 20 November 1989 imposes an obligation on the state tosubmit reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child every fiveyears. It should be noted that the Ministry of National Education re-