The Urgency of Rights-Based Youth Engagement Roundtable: AYAC Summary

Dr Dean Farquhar | National Youth Engagement Lead | AYAC

Background on the NYPN

The National Youth Practitioners’ Network (NYPN) was established by AYAC in 2024 to provide a national platform for youth sector practitioners, policy experts, researchers and young people to share perspectives, strengthen practice, and build coordinated approaches to emerging issues affecting young people. The NYPN meets quarterly and hosts workshops and roundtables on topics of sector relevance — with insights published to support advocacy and practice development nationally. This short briefing paper summarises the key points from our recent NYPN roundtable on the urgency of rights-based youth engagement.

Event Context

We are living in a period of polarisation, dislocation and conflict that is destabilising human rights commitments and the frameworks and institutions through which they are to be realised around the world. Evidence collected by Amnesty International points to violations of international humanitarian law during armed conflicts, repression of dissent, discrimination, economic and climate injustices, and the misuse of technology to infringe on human rights. At this critical juncture, AYAC sought to bring relevant stakeholders together to centre discussion around how the rights of young people are best protected and advanced in Australia. The roundtable panel included:

·      Satara Uthayakumaran, 2025 Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations

·      Howard Choo, Head of Policy and Advocacy, 54 Reasons

·      Prof Amanda Third, Co-Director at Young and Resilient Research Centre, Western Sydney University

Panellists discussed the relevance of international human rights frameworks to Australian policy and practice, including how rights are experienced by young people and upheld by systems and institutions. Attention was afforded to young people’s right to participate and shape decisions that affect them. The discussion centred on strengthening the legal, institutional and practice foundations for meaningful youth engagement. Short summaries of the key points raised during the discussion are provided below.

AYAC’s Key Takeaways from the Roundtable

1. The Australian Government has a responsibility to advance a package of rights guaranteed to young people.

   As signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the government has a responsibility to realise and advance the commitments set out in its 54 Articles covering rights to provision, protection, and participation.

   This package of rights is indivisible and interconnected, with rights often serving to reinforce and strengthen each other. For example, the right to education can support the rights to participation and non-discrimination. Rights-based approaches to youth engagement are necessarily holistic.

2. There is need to consider the intersections of lived experience to address gaps in service provision.

   While Australia has signed international rights agreements, many young people—particularly those in detention, remote communities, and disadvantaged contexts—do not experience these protections in practice.

   Addressing this gap, requires that we commit to thinking carefully about the complex, intersecting forces that shape young people’s lived experiences so that we can (re)design institutions, support systems and engagement techniques that are rights-enhancing for young people.

   Rights are not merely legal statements but commitments to protect, provide for, and empower young people. When systems fail to deliver on these commitments, rights lose credibility and practical value.

3. Youth participation is a legal and ethical right, not a discretionary activity
   Young people’s involvement in decision-making is grounded in human rights obligations. Governments and organisations have a responsibility to create meaningful participation opportunities rather than treating engagement as optional or symbolic.

   Young people are also uniquely positioned to understand contemporary social, economic, and digital challenges. Their insights should not only be sought as a matter of procedure, but they should be recognised as valuable evidence that strengthens policy design and service delivery.

   Yet tokenism prevails in a number of contexts. There is evidence of engagement processes that have occurred late in policy development, involved limited diversity, or lacked clear influence over decisions. Feedback loops and the evidencing of power shifting between adults and young people can be strengthened.

4. Rights-based youth engagement is a process, not an event.
   Effective engagement requires formal practice frameworks, child-friendly feedback mechanisms, leadership oversight, and systems for translating young people’s input into organisational action. In short, it forms a process that requires reason-giving, reflection and dialogue to meet the emerging and changing needs and aspirations of young people.

   Tensions might surface around how to best balance the need to keep young people safe and the requirement that we work to maximise their agency. Tensions might also likely surface between how to manage parent/carer rights and the rights of a young person. These tensions can be negotiated. Rights-based approaches provide tools to navigate these tensions ethically through dialogue, supervision, and professional judgement. They provide touch points and minimal standards for orienting discussion and deciding what is in the best interest of the young person.

5. Sustained systemic reform is necessary to support meaningful engagement
   Long-term progress depends on legal reform, strengthened rights education, investment in community youth work, improved coordination across government, and durable participation infrastructure rather than short-term projects. Participants emphasised the following strategic approaches to strengthen rights-based engagement:

Policy & Legal Reform
 - Progress development of a Federal Human Rights Act.
 - Strengthen existing state human rights instruments.
 - Embed participation rights explicitly in sectoral policy frameworks.

Systems Change
 - Institutionalise youth impact assessments across portfolios.
 - Develop cross-departmental coordination for rights implementation.
 - Improve complaints, redress and accountability mechanisms.

Practice & Capacity Building
 - Expand civics and rights education in school and community settings.
 - Resource community and grassroots youth engagement practices.
 - Encourage feedback mechanisms that demonstrate influence on decision-making.

Summary

Rights-based youth political engagement is critical to ensuring that young people are treated with dignity, and that their experiences, perspectives and aspirations are meaningfully integrated into democratic life and public policy.

The roundtable highlighted a shared commitment among relevant stakeholders to challenge tokenistic approaches and move toward deeper, system-level shifts that prioritise rights, equity and participation — laying the foundation for more inclusive and effective youth engagement practice.

Click here to watch the full event