Protecting human rights in youth detention: listening to the voices of children and young people in detention

Abstract

ABSTRACT Human rights abuses and entrenched cultural problems have been exposed in youth detention centres across Australia in recent years. Australia’s recent commitment to a comprehensive system of human rights monitoring under the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture by January 2022 creates the opportunity to better protect rights. This includes ensuring that monitoring bodies overseeing youth justice detention engage effectively with the children and young people. It is widely recognised that these young people have commonly experienced significant disadvantage, and that the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people in detention is an intergenerational legacy of the destruction wrought by colonisation. Monitoring methodologies must ensure that children and young people detained can participate in the monitoring process, and are protected from possible reprisals. This article will outline the legal background to these monitoring requirements and make practical recommendations for effective monitoring in youth justice detention.