The Power of Voice: Why Human Rights Start with Youth in Governance
“We’re not the leaders of tomorrow — we’re leading now.”
When Elina Forsyth talks about human rights, she is not speaking in the abstract language of conventions and frameworks. She is speaking about voice — the fundamental right of every person to be heard in the decisions that shape their life, and the persistent reality that young people are too often excluded from exactly those decisions. For Elina, this is not a theoretical problem. It is a structural one, and it demands structural solutions.
A 2024 Menzies Global Voices Fellow and fourth-year student at Monash University studying a dual Bachelor of Arts and Criminology — specialising in Human Rights and International Relations — Elina has spent her formative years not waiting for a seat at the table, but actively building the conditions that make one possible. As Secretary of the Monash International Affairs Society and an Events Officer at the Young Diplomats Society, she has been doing the quiet, consistent work of civic infrastructure: convening people, creating space, and modelling the kind of engaged citizenship she believes Australia’s democratic future depends upon.
Rights Are Not Aspirational — They Are Actionable
At the heart of Elina’s advocacy is a refusal to treat human rights as aspirational language. Rights, she argues, only become real when they are embedded in the processes through which decisions are made — and that requires the people most affected by those decisions to have a genuine voice in shaping them. For young people, this is rarely the case. Governance structures tend to be designed around seniority, experience and institutional access — qualities that, by definition, exclude those who are newer to the world and to public life.
But Elina challenges the logic that underpins this exclusion. Age is not a proxy for wisdom, and seniority is not a substitute for legitimacy. What young people bring to governance is not a lesser form of knowledge — it is a different and urgently needed one. They carry proximity to emerging social realities, to the long-term consequences of today’s policy decisions, and to the communities most likely to be left behind when representation is narrow.
“We’re not the leaders of tomorrow,” she reflects. “We’re leading now.”
That conviction was tested and deepened through her experience at the Y20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro — a gathering of youth delegates from across the G20 nations tasked with developing policy recommendations on the issues that matter most to the next generation. In rooms where global agendas were debated, Elina encountered the full complexity of inclusive democracy in practice: the tensions between national priorities and universal principles, the challenge of building consensus across vastly different lived experiences, and the transformative potential of what becomes possible when young people are given genuine authority to contribute.
The Architecture of Inclusion
What Elina brings to conversations about governance is a criminologist’s eye for systems — an understanding that exclusion is rarely accidental. It is designed into the architecture of institutions through the processes they use, the language they speak, the timing of consultations, and the criteria they use to decide whose expertise counts. Inclusive democracy, in her view, requires more than goodwill. It requires deliberate redesign.
This is particularly true for young people from marginalised communities — those for whom the barriers to participation are compounded by race, class, geography or disability. Rights-based governance, Elina argues, must begin by asking whose rights are being protected and whose voices are structurally absent. The answer to that question should drive the design of every consultation process, every advisory body, every forum that claims to represent a community’s interests.
Her academic grounding in international relations gives her a global frame for this work. The challenges of youth representation are not unique to Australia — they are a feature of democratic systems worldwide, and the solutions being developed in one context have the potential to inform another. Elina’s time at the Y20 brought this into sharp relief, connecting her to a cohort of young advocates navigating the same structural barriers with different cultural tools and political contexts.
Voice as a Leadership Practice
What stands out most in Elina’s approach is her understanding that voice is not just a right to be protected — it is a practice to be cultivated. It requires confidence, skills, networks and access. And for too many young people, those conditions are unevenly distributed. This is why the work of organisations like the Menzies Leadership Foundation matters beyond individual opportunity. It is, at its best, a contribution to the infrastructure of democratic participation — the quiet, sustained investment in the people and practices that make inclusive governance possible.
At the Foundation, we believe that leadership grounded in dignity, representation and a commitment to rights-based thinking is not a niche interest. It is foundational to the kind of Australia we want to build. Elina’s work and the values she carries into every space she enters are a reminder of what that looks like in practice — clear-eyed, principled, and entirely unwilling to wait.
Elina Forsyth is a 2024 Menzies Global Voices Fellow. Applications for the 2026 Global Voices Fellowship are now open. If you believe that young voices belong at the centre of governance and rights-based leadership, we invite you to explore the Fellowship and stay connected with the Menzies Leadership Foundation’s broader emerging leadership community.
At the Menzies Leadership Foundation, we believe the future of governance depends on who gets to shape it. Too many of our systems are designed — whether by intention or inertia — to keep young people out.
Elina Forsyth’s story is a challenge to that design. Drawing on her experience from Monash to the Y20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, she makes the case that youth voice is not a courtesy to be granted — it is a right to be built into the architecture of democratic life.
As the decisions of today lock in the realities of tomorrow, inclusive governance is not a nice-to-have. It is the work.
Read Elina’s story. Engage with the Menzies Leadership Foundation. And if you believe young people belong at the centre of the decisions that shape their future — help us build the conditions that make that possible.
