An international report has found thousands of children remain locked behind bars in detention centres across the globe, including more than 500 in Australia.
The findings have sparked calls for the Federal Government to speed up the releasing of minors from remote facilities into the community.
The Captured Childhood report, released today, calls for nations to develop laws and practices that ensure asylum-seeker and refugee children are free to reside in the community while their cases are assessed.
The children interviewed were detained in countries including Malta, Greece, Hungary, the United States, Malaysia and Australia, in facilities ranging from jail cells to purpose-built facilities.
The report says some were "incarcerated in squalor, placing them at risk of illness and disease", while others were "kept in circumstances that seem designed to isolate and humiliate them".
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Kumar, 11, Mahela, 10 and Lasith, 8, fled Sri Lanka with their parents and were detained in Malaysia.
The report describes how they were made to strip naked and squat and stand repeatedly while they were checked for unauthorised possessions. "If they stopped squatting and standing, they were hit with a stick."
The report says immigration detention has a profoundly negative impact on children's physical and psychological development, placing them at risk of depression, anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, bed-wetting and feelings of hopelessness and frustration.
It says reasons for detaining children range from deterrence to others, to identity checking and health screening and that these are unacceptable justifications.
"The detention of children is a denial of their fundamental right to liberty," it states. The report calls for child immigration detention to be outlawed in all countries. Instead, it says, children should be placed in the community and be protected and supported while their cases are assessed.
Parents travelling with children should be placed in the community with their children, it says.
"Children shouldn't be kept in detention. There are more humane, more effective and cheaper ways of managing migration than detaining children," Dr Corlett said.
The report is being presented in Geneva to the United Nations Human Rights Council, as the basis of a year-long Children Out of Immigration Detention campaign.
Greens immigration spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young said Australian legislation must be changed to outlaw the detention of children.
"It is shameful that Australia is on the list of countries that locks children up simply for seeking refuge and safety," Senator Hanson-Young said in a statement.
