My job is to tell the UN about young lives in Australia. I wish the story was a better one

It’s a sweltering day in Queensland and a 16-year-old, who has chosen not to be identified, tells me he commits crimes because prison is better than his life on the outside. Better than the abuse at home. Better than a park bench. “At least in a jail cell, I have a bed and three meals.”

Stolen futures. Australia has some of the worst child incarceration rates in the world.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Only days later, I’m sitting with another teenager – once illegally kept in an adult watchhouse – who feels otherwise. He describes a cold, windowless cell, with harsh fluorescent light buzzing overhead, casting long shadows on the concrete walls.

He says there is no bed to sleep on, just a hard bench or the floor. No school, no books, no therapy – only terrifying noises of adults around him, some shouting, some crying.

“I was so scared. There was no one looking out for me,” he says quietly, whispering as if he’s still there.

As Australia’s Youth Representative to the United Nations, my task is to journey across Australia, from bustling cities to remote outposts, meeting young people.

From schools to detention facilities, Tasmania to the Tiwi Islands, I am gathering stories that reflect the depth and breadth of the young Australian experience. On this journey I have met thousands – those who have endured prison, survived forced marriages and modern slavery. I’ve also spoken with disabled children, and those from First Nations communities – all still fighting to be heard.

And soon I’ll be boarding a plane to New York, to bring their voices to the world stage by presenting my findings to the UN General Assembly. I stepped into this role wanting to find hope; instead, I have found heartbreak.

I have sat with 10-year-olds who were trapped in the detention cycle before the word “justice” was part of their vocabulary. I’ve sat with exhausted youth workers and legal advocates who are consistently at war with the systems of justice around them.

“It’s a race to the bottom,” one youth worker said. She represented an Aboriginal boy picked up by Townsville police because he “looked suspicious”. In NSW, a sign-language advocate tells me over a video call how Sydney police threatened a deaf man in his 20s walking on the street.“The cop said that if this young man didn’t stop moving, he would pull his gun out,” she says. Fortunately, the man’s sister who was nearby, rushed over – hands flying in frantic sign language – desperately trying to bridge the deadly gap between silence and misunderstanding. This could have easily ended in tragedy – all because an officer wasn’t trained to recognise this young person’s disability.

This isn’t just incompetence. It’s a death sentence. And these are not isolated cases. Children as young as 10 are being locked away in watch houses across the country for weeks on end. Queensland’s Draconian “adult crime, adult time” laws mean a child can be sentenced like an adult for 13 offences, erasing any consideration of their circumstances, their development, or their potential for rehabilitation.

These are not just statistics, they are stolen futures. Australia has some of the worst child incarceration rates in the world. We have one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility out of 38 developed countries. This tells every child detained in a watch house, every young person failed by the foster care system, every First Nations teenager racially profiled by police, that their government does not care about them.

And you know it’s when survival looks like a jail cell for a child, that we haven’t just failed these kids – we’re beginning to destroy them. But I will also share something else – something easy to miss among the rubble of these stories. It is the quiet strength rising in unexpected places.

In Tasmania’s Ashley Youth Detention Centre, incarcerated young people are finding their voice. Guided by the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, they’re using art to confront decision-makers with the lived experiences, resilience and insight of children inside the justice system. In regional North Queensland, for First Nations’ children who have been removed from their families, from culture and from country, youth councils and cultural fellowships are offering the chance to lead, to heal and to reclaim what was stolen.

In Alice Springs, Future Yayes (meaning “Future Sisters” in the Arrernte local language); a heart-driven, youth-led movement, gives young Aboriginal women from local town camps the power to ignite change in their communities. Young women are encouraged to embrace their worth, find their voices and cultivate the self-love and confidence they so deeply deserve.

And in every town, every school, every detention centre I visit, there are youth workers, counsellors, lawyers, community elders and volunteers who refuse to give up. Who fight every day, not because they’re paid to – but because they believe every young person matters.

I carry the pain of a generation that is exhausted. But I also carry their fire. So when I stand before the United Nations in October, on a world stage in front of almost 200 countries, it will be with all of that inside me. A voice not only for what we must fix, but for what we must nurture – because across Australia, against all odds, there are young people still daring to dream of something better. And that is worth fighting for.

Satara Uthayakumaran is a writer and student at the Australian National University.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.