DEBBIE WHITMONT, REPORTER: This is Misbah and Shamim. They've both been recognised as refugees. Shamim - who's 17 - has spent 1090 days in Nauru. For Misbah - who's 13 - and has been in detention on Christmas Island and Nauru - it's been 1179 days.

When Shamim first heard she was being transferred to Nauru, she thought it was Norway. She was only fourteen.

SHAMIM: When they told us about you going to Nauru, and then I was like oh we're going to Norway it's so good. Like Norway is so beautiful. Mum, Granny, why are you crying, this is, we're going to Norway.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But Nauru was a long way from Norway.

SHAMIM: And I feel so bad that oh I was thinking that we were going to be in Norway but I'm in Nauru. Where is this place? I never heard in my life this place. Where is Nauru? I feel so bad and then I feel like they gonna eat me. I was so young and I said to mum I am so scared. I feel they will eat me here. My mum she was crying she said don't be so scared everything's gonna be fine.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Like Shamim, Misbah fled Myanmar.

MISBAH: In Burma the Muslim people and Buddhist people are fighting and the Buddhist people doesn't want Muslim people to stay in Burma that's why they doesn't like us, so they kill, they kill mostly the Muslim people and they rape the girls, they kill the boys and they burn the houses.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Misbah left with her mother and three sisters. She was only nine. She says there wasn't enough money for her father to come with them - so he planned to follow later.

MISBAH: On the boat it was so dangerous and even my little sister she was crying, she was like, "Oh I'm so scared of this swimming pool." She was like she thought that that there was a swimming pool and my mum was crying too. But when we get to Christmas Island we are so happy that we are here we are safe, and we, I was thinking that I would get to meet my father again.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: At first - to everyone who met her - Shamim seemed irrepressible.

TRACEY DONEHUE: Oh she was very talkative, you know, she was always asking for more work, more work. She wanted to be, yeah, an obstetrician, she w- very ambitious, very focussed on the future and very, very, you know, happy, bubbly.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: At school in the detention centre, Shamim was a star student.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: She always sought out additional support and double checking and handing in drafts and making sure that she was on the right track so she had really high hopes for her future and dreams that she could easily have achieved, easily.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Gabby Sutherland, Tracey Donehue, and Jude Reen, all spent nearly a year and a half teaching in the school - run by Save the Children - in the Nauru detention centre. Under Australian law, they could go to jail for talking about the children they taught there. But they've decided they have to.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: Well it's death by slow torture. It's, it's just how to, the place is set up to make people go mad or just make people, just make people die inside.

JUDITH REEN: You know what, because the harm is permanent. It's the damage is done for these children. It is done. Three years of their lives has been- have been spent, sorry, in the camp - sorry [crying] I just want to make sure it doesn't happen to another generation.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: At first, despite the fences, the mouldy tents, and the 45-degree heat - the teachers were amazed by their students.

JUDITH REEN: I, I really felt sorry for them in the conditions that they were living in. And then on the other hand was so surprised at how resilient they were. Um you know, th-they'd always play little tricks or make funny comments in class. They were cheeky and vibrant. They were so bubbly, and it was hard to contain their enthusiasm.

TRACEY DONEHUE: To get there and find that they were very, um, very ambitious and driven and many of them, yeah prioritised education that, um yeah, I was really, as a teacher, certainly at the beginning that made my job easier and more pleasant.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: The school, which had air conditioning, became a refuge from the detention camp.

JUDITH REEN: They needed to get out of the camp to come to school to get away from that stultifying, you know, traumatic environment. The school was their reprieve; it was their safe place.

TRACEY DONEHUE: It was the one happy place and it was the one safe happy place in that whole environment. The teachers were kind, they were professional teachers, it got them out of the camp, they weren't in tents. You know they were in a you know like in a modern environment, a comfortable environment, a secure environment, a nurturing environment.

MISBAH: They were very polite to us and we were polite to them too. So like it was fantastic school, it was amazing. We were having a very good time and we feel it was the safest place for us to stay in here.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Outside the school, the children weren't called by their names - but were called by their boat numbers.

JUDITH REEN: They were being treated as criminals, they were going through metal d- like being detected, metal detected, wanded, um you know on and off the bus at both ends of the school trip.

SHAMIM: They know we have nothing still they are checking every child when we go out and when we come back. Every time. So it's also a bad thing in detention centre, we living in detention centre and they do that every day, every single day, they never forget. Even though they forget to do something but they will never forget to make us feel bad.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: As the months passed the teachers saw detention taking its toll on the children.

JUDITH REEN: You could see the light drain out of their eyes. You could see them go flat. You'd just see um their morale completely drop and they'd be physically but not, you know, mentally present. And they'd say, teacher, I can't think, I can't concentrate. Um and ah eventually um we put in an order for some beanbags for a reading corner. Sadly, you know, students would come in and I just remember one particular girl lying in the beanbag and just weeping for three hours.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Shamim stopped asking for extra school work.

TRACEY DONEHUE: She started to get quieter, withdrawing from her peers, ah, she became more withdrawn um, contributing less in class, ah not asking for extension and when I would offer it to her she would just say "no I can't, can't think".

DEBBIE WHITMONT: By mid-2014, the teachers were seeing worrying signs of depression.

JUDITH REEN: After they'd been there for like between eight and twelve months, that's when you started to see um kids, you know, hiding their arms. They were beginning to self-harm. These were teenagers that was - that was the only thing they had control of was their own body. So they were turning in on themselves, they weren't being violent. They were being, you know, they felt like nothing.

TRACEY DONEHUE: And I, I've n- know students who would, you know, at times sort of say, you know, over that time that I was there that sixteen months, would say: 'I would never do that, no matter how bad this gets I will never, never self-harm.' And just about every student that has said that to me has self-harm- self harmed during their time there.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Then, in September 2014, the Australian government put out a video message.

SCOTT MORRISON: My name is Scott Morrison and I'm the Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. You may have heard that temporary protection visas are to be reintroduced. This policy does not apply to those who are on Nauru or on Manus Island or have been transferred there...

DEBBIE WHITMONT: For those in Nauru, it meant any hopes of making it to Australia, were crushed.

SCOTT MORRISON: Processing and resettlement in Australia will never be an option for those who have been transferred to regional processing centres because they have arrived in Australia illegally by boat.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: People in Nauru saw it as punishment.

MISBAH: In most of the news they think, they says that we are criminals and that we are not, ah, good persons to come in Australia. We feel very sad. Most of the people even think they will suicide and that's better for them, than having like this much stress. They just have a small brain, and they just, they think too much and it's going to explode.

Refugee protesters on Nauru: "Morrison, shame on you, Morrison, shame on you"

JUDITH REEN: There were mass protests after that. So for the first time you know in the life of the school, children stopped coming, especially the older children. They put out their camp beds in the communal area in the camp and just lay out there in protest, not eating.

TRACEY DONEHUE: Um, one of my, ah, seventeen-year-old girl students she sewed her lips together. Ah, there were two other students in the school who I knew well, they sewed their lips together.

JUDITH REEN: We went down to the camp a lot and tried to coax them back up to school. We went down and tried to talk them down from the protest.

TRACEY DONEHUE: Um, you know, 'come on, you're coming to school' and that was just heartbreaking to see some of, you know, some of our students who had only, you know, a month- a month beforehand been, you know, bright, vivacious, chatty teenagers. You know, if you took them out of the context situation they were in, you know, just like teenagers anywhere around the world, to see them [sigh] yeah just to see them looking at you with vacant eyes.

JUDITH REEN: It was like constantly talking people off a ledge. You know, constantly trying to um instil some hope, you know, and say you're worth, you're worth it, you are important, there are people who need you, love you. You will do something good with your life; you will make a contribution in the future. You are someone, you matter, you know.

ALYSSA MUNOZ: Most of us had worked in statutory child protection for at least over four years before we came to Nauru. Um so um it was very frustrating for myself a-and I think f-for all that we could not do or make real recommendations, even though we were highly trained.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Child protection workers like Alyssa Munoz felt powerless.

ALYSSA MUNOZ: We were really there to get people through day by day, um to get them through to the next day. Ah I had one little girl, um which I'll never forget, who I think had just had enough and there was a chair um right on the balcony. And she stood on the balcony, and I came over and I said, 'what are you doing?' And she said, 'if I jump right now no- it wouldn't matter, it wouldn't- who cares?' And so for ten minutes I spoke to her about how much I would care if she did and how much her father would care if-if she did jump. So for that time I held my hand over in front of her, over the side of the balcony and what was going through my head, if she jumps can I grab that back of her? Will I be able to grab her in time? Yeah, I'll never forget th-that moment. It was, so for about ten minutes I'm trying to talk this beautiful, she was only nine, ten at the time, just not to jump off the balcony of the school. I mean that's how traumatised these children are.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: That was Batol?

ALYSSA MUNOZ: That was Batol.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: What sort of kid was she?

ALYSSA MUNOZ: The most vivacious, spirited young little girl I've ever met!

DEBBIE WHITMONT: This is Batol. Two years later, she's still in Nauru with her father and sister. She's ten.

ALYSSA MUNOZ: I think about her all the time, um especially that I still have nightmares of that particular moment and I still sometimes see her actually jumping.

BATOL: When Save the Children was in Nauru we every time we go to school. We didn't miss a day and we loved that school and we had so much fun with them.

ALYSSA MUNOZ: She has amazing ambitions and amazing spirit, and I really think that um she's destined for great things later as she gets older, because she really understands and gets the world itself, um and has great empathy for others as well.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Batol and her father and sister are Iranian. They've been officially recognised as refugees. Batol has now spent 976 days in Nauru - nearly a third of her life time.

TRACEY DONEHUE: She's so smart, that's why I'd always say to her, 'you could run this camp Batol' So I worry about the loss of education, huge gaps in education, because that's what I say she's so smart. But um I worry she won't get the um opportunities that will let her yeah reach her full potential.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: In Nauru, Gabby Sutherland taught design and technology. She ran cooking classes and pancake days and brought in wood and tools to make boxes. But her most popular project was getting the children to turn the classroom into a cafe. It was supposed to be a one off.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: They had a vote, they had all of these different names and had a vote on the name and called the cafe - this, the one off cafe - the Red Rose Cafe.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: They were just so happy, it was just lovely to see the kids ah just happy normal children in a normal environment, which wasn't really a normal environment outside the door.

MISBAH: It was amazing, I feel like, I feel like that I was having a real caf�. We made cakes, we made coffees, and I work as a waiter in there.

SHAMIM: And Save The Children provide everything. They make us happy. They bring us hope. Even though they can't do anything they just trying to hope with us. And then last time they made first like cafe which called Red Rose and It was so good. And my friend she was the manager in there and it was just extremely feel good.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: But in March 2015, the children were told there'd be no more Red Rose cafe. As people were given refugee status and moved out of the camp, the Australian school was going to be closed. The children were told they would have to go to schools in the Nauruan community - they were devastated.

SHAMIM: We asked them not to close like, we nearly to beg them. But they didn't listen to us. They said this is the order you all have to go to, like, Nauruan school.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: At around that time, Shamim started to get physically unwell.

TRACEY DONEHUE: She was pale. She said she couldn't eat um. Yeah having headaches. She had a lump in her chest. She was feeling numb down one side of her body. And then she, I remember that kind of came to a head, she passed out in camp. So she fainted down in camp.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: She was just talking about suicide, talking about self-harm talking about how hopeless the situation was and I can remember sitting down with her and she was just, she was just, just this sadness, just sadness and hopelessness in her voice, in her face, in her body. It was just, it was like she had given up and when a child expresses that they want to kill themselves in that environment, you believe them.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: At least seven Incident Reports around that time document Shamim talking about self-harm and suicide.

SHAMIM: I wasn't feeling ok, and it was so, so bad, and I want to feel the pain which I'm having in my like heart and it's so bad, so I'm just taking it out. But still when I did it, did it, it wasn't painful. But I still did it, I wasn't ok and I just did some stupid things. Maybe just for a while I forgot the feeling pain, but so bad, but after the pain from my hand gone, it started back again.

TRACEY DONEHUE: I did one incident report where she came to school and she had all was all red on her um knuckles and she said that she'd been in the playground which is an area of camp at midnight on her own and that she'd punched ah a metal wall metal bar sorry pole. And first I was saying well what were you doing in the playground- you shouldn't be in the playground on your own you know in the middle of night and she said 'I do it every night I go there and cry.'

DEBBIE WHITMONT: In October 2015, the school was closed. Its air conditioned classrooms were taken over by Border Force. A small group of different teachers went to the Nauruan schools with the children. Kristy Mannell was one of them.

KRISTY MANNELL: I've travelled a lot and I've worked in a lot of schools across Asia and Africa, and I still will never get over what I saw at Nauru College. The stench of urine hits you as you walk in and the toilet, the girls toilet is like nothing I've ever seen in my in my in my life. Um one day, the girls said that they just simply couldn't use it, ah and they um and I walked in and- and faeces were s- were smeared all over the, all over the walls.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: It wasn't only the toilets. Many Nauruan's, simply didn't want the detention centre children at their schools.

SHAMIM: The local kids they tell us that, 'why did you come here? This is our country; you not belong here. We hate you, we hate you guys'.

MISBAH: One day, me and my friends, our group were sitting in the lunch area we are having, having our lunch and a boy, and a boy come and touched us badly and ran away. And one of my other friends told them to stop doing that and they say that 'we will kill you guys.' And they showed the knife to us and they say 'don't come here anymore. This is not your school; this is our school. This is our country. Go from here.'

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Was there fighting?

PAM OAKES, Fmr Education Manager, Refugees Programme, Nauru: I witnessed fighting when I went to one of the schools to speak to the students and the teacher. I witnessed fighting in the yard. I mean quite violent fighting. Students hitting the ground and rolling around, um, and teachers walking past with no intervention in that. In fact, I was about to intervene and I was told by another teacher not to.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: These pictures were filmed a few months ago outside Nauru College. The white shirts are school uniforms.

MISBAH: They fight very badly and sometimes even blood came out - and I was so scared that they fight like this, they were, they were both Nauruan's and they were fighting and they were punching each other and even the blood come out, so we were so scared.

KRISTY MANNELL, Fmr Teacher, Nauru detention centre: Yeah, physical fights are constant, yes, definitely. Often between ah boys, Nauruan kids, um it- it's quite a violent culture. I even saw an attempted murder when I was on Nauru with ah um with a machete. So um m- much violence. Violence reigns among the adults and as such the children pick up on that and that's a way that they solve their problems.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: So what sort of things happens in the school?

KRISTY MANNELL: Ah so children would solve their problems through fights on a regular basis.

MISBAH: I really wanted to learn, I really wanted to be an educated person so I always tried my best to go to school, but I did try in here too, I did try my really, really best to go to school but I don't feel safe in there.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: When a boy trapped her in the toilets and the teacher did nothing, Shamim stopped going to school.

SHAMIM: Yeah, I wasn't feeling good and the teachers were so like bad with me, they were just discriminating, and the kids, and the other students too. We didn't study nicely, like they didn't have teachers or anyone. So it was bad. And that accident what happened in the toilets and everything it makes me so bad. And after like I'm getting more sick and sick and I'm vomiting every day. It was so hard for me to go there and study.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Ten year old Batol has stopped going to school. She left this phone message for her former teachers.

BATOL: The reason I am not going to school is because I don't feel safe there. I am scared. The children are scaring us with their knife. When I grow up I want to be a vet. How can I be a vet when I'm not going to school. So what we can do? I want to go to school. No-one cares. My father cares.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Amnesty International's Anna Neistat interviewed refugee children and their families in Nauru in July.

ANNA NEISTAT: No matter how horrible the detention was, and the conditions in detention were, quite a few families and children themselves told me that now that they're in the community, they feel less safe because they're subjected to attacks from the local population and of course they simply cannot go to school because there as well they are subjected to attacks and there's absolutely nothing being done about this by the authorities.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Navid and Hossein are Iranian. They and their families were among the first to be recognised as refugees and released from detention. Both of them have now spent more than 1100 days in Nauru.

HOSSEIN: You know like everyone else in my age we've got a dream and my dream is to study medicine and um be a surgeon, you know, but unfortunately I can't do it here. Even I'm trying the most by getting to my pathway but unfortunately that's not possible. The studies here are not possible.

NAVID: My goal is to be, is to become a psychologist in future and make my mum proud.

HOSSEIN: We went to school, we've tried. We did university studies they're all useless. You know, like even the, even the certificate that they gave us it's not a real certificate, it's nothing.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Most of the time, Navid and Hossein just stay home. Even as young men they're afraid to go outside after ten at night.

HOSSEIN: People in my age, not only me like everyone here really scared to get out of their accommodation at late nights, because they are scared if someone would attack them or threaten them or like, how can I say it - or rape them. Like many girls won't go outside in the evenings either, like alone. Like we should take our family, like the female part of our family outside for shopping, even shopping, you know, you don't know what will happen.

KRISTY MANNELL: People throw stones, there's wild dogs. If you're a small person like Shamim is for example there are large packs of wild dogs that just roam the island and it's not a safe space to be to be operating in on a daily basis, physically or emotionally, you see scary things and um you're just you're not safe.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Public fighting - is par for the course. Now that refugees have moved into the community, they've become targets for violence.

ANNA NEISTAT: We are not talking about minor incidents, we are talking about attacks with machetes, people being hit with metal bars, people being thrown off their motorcycles, thrown off the cliffs. People sustaining very serious injuries as a result. But what's even worse is that there is absolutely no response. All of these attacks are being perpetrated with complete impunity.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Amid the everyday violence, refugee victims aren't a priority for the police.

KRISTY MANNELL: They're out for their own purposes. There's no incentive for the police to help the help the asylum seeker population at all.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Navid and Hossein and their families have been hospitalised from punches, pushed off rocks and robbed. They've complained to the police, but the police haven't laid charges.

ANNA NEISTAT: I think it is safe to say in virtually none of the cases there has been any action where any refugee or asylum seeker was attacked or assaulted and a Nauruan was brought to justice for that.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: On the 26th April, Omid Masoumali - a 24-year-old Iranian - who'd been recognised as a refugee - and was a friend of Navid and Hosseins' - set himself on fire. Hossein was nearby.

HOSSEIN: You know unfortunately at the time when Omid self-immolated himself, I was present there and not only me there were small kids present at the moment, and you know like compared to the kids, you know, I can really control myself in many things but they can't. They were present when Omid self-immolated himself and after that incident many kids were affected mentally, that they were crying at the nights, like, they were seeing nightmares they were talking about the incidents, between, among the children. You know it's not a really good thing to experience when you are a child.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Hossein blames himself for not being able to stop it happening.

HOSSEIN: You know, by seeing someone self-immolating himself in front of you, it's not a little thing, I can say that - or self-harming or trying to do horrible stuff in their body, you know, it's not an easy thing to cope with it, you know.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Some people say though that he did it to try and come to Australia. What, what do you say to that?

HOSSEIN: He did it because he was tired from here.

NAVID: What's the point of coming to Australia with a burned body.

HOSSEIN: Yeah, exactly.

NAVID: What's the point of this like?

HOSSEIN: Why should he do that to go to Australia?

NAVID: Is it worth it, to do that to come to Australia? I don't think so.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Nauru Hospital wasn't equipped to treat Omid's burns. It took twenty-six hours for Omid to be medevac'd to Australia, where he died.

HOSSEIN: You know when people came here they were patient. I can say that. Like I was patient, my family was patient, but right now even we've got trouble at home, you know, the patience that we've got is demolished. And not only in my family, everyone is like that, no one's patient any more. They're just, they're just waiting for a sparkle to explode, you know, I can describe it like that. Not to do big things - like inside their families, like you know, situations in the families are really bad - and it's something that unfortunately I can't explain it, you have to see it.

NAVID: It's getting worse and worse. It's getting worse every day. Like, they can't, I see that people can't take this anymore really.

MISBAH: I try my best to be strong. I try, my mum tries to make us happy. We, we always keep ourselves busy, we try our best to keep ourselves busy and we don't go out much because we don't want something to happen to us and we feel very sad about it, we don't want it, that's why we stay in the home.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Misbah and her Mother having dinner. At 13, Misbah has spent nearly a quarter of her life in Nauru. She's now a recognised refugee - but she's too afraid to go to school, fears she'll never see her father again, and she and her sisters mostly stay home for their safety.

MISBAH: We ran away from Burma because of the raping, things that's happening to the girls and burning houses, and stealing, and we came here, we came to Australia, we tried to get to Australia, and now we are here, the same thing happening, raping, stealing, killing. I've seen people, now people died, some people burn themselves, some people take too much medicine and died and some people say that they get harm - they get the Nauruan tried to harm them, to hurt them and many other things like, stealing, stealing, raping. I've heard many things like that.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Misbah wants to go home. But her mother says they can't.

MISBAH: I really want to go back because I think that, I think that in here having stress, better we go back to home. I asked my mum that let's go back but she said 'no it's not possible - if we go back we will get killed'. And I was like, 'Why mum? Even we are dying in here every day so why not just, we just not die one day, let's just go back.' So she was like 'no, we can't go back like that.'

GABBY SUTHERLAND: Do want to make up the end of the story?

BATOL: Yeah.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: When Gabby Sutherland first got back to Australia and got sad messages from Batol, she wasn't sure what to do. She decided to give Batol a cyber school.

BATOL: They're best friends for ever and ever.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: Best friends for ever and ever, that's a lovely story. We book in at a certain time and I'd say meet me online and she would message me ten minutes before and say - 'I've got my books and I've got my pencils and I'm ready to go'.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: They're still doing it.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: Was she happy to wait for a long, long time?

BATOL: She was like, really like sad, but she was sitting down, like watching the waves go up and down, up and down, up and down.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: In her three years in Nauru, Shamim has been recognised as a refugee. But she finds it hard to still have any hope for the future.

SHAMIM: They didn't accept us but why now, why now, they just, whenever we are happy they just make it sad and bad and everything - why - you shouldn't be happy, you came illegally, be sad and be like that. This is so hard for us. Already it's been so long.

KRISTY MANNELL: When I met Shamim she was highly charismatic, kind hearted, ambitious and intelligent young woman. She was very, very popular and beloved. Um everybody liked her. She's, witty, caring, and she like and she knows five languages, right. She's such a um brilliant young person with so much potential and much ambition. She at the time she spoke about wanting to be a doctor um yeah, she was a great kid.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: By the middle of last year, Shamim was at the top of the list of the detention centre's most vulnerable children.

SHAMIM: I don't know, I am sick emotionally, physically, everything, mentally. Not, it's not even only me, everyone, you can come and see here. Every single person is sick. Even though not physically but they are just break by emotional. Everyone is break.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Last October, when the Australian school closed and the teachers left, they were worried, especially about Shamim.

TRACEY DONEHUE: Shamim has said on many occasions and with increasing frequency over the past six months, you know I have no hope, I don't want to be here um, I can't go on.

GABBY SUTHERLAND: In the case of Shamim, she just wants somebody to give her a proper diagnosis, help me - and she cuts herself because she's frustrated.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Since February, Gabby Sutherland has been asking the Department of Immigration to urgently medivac Shamim to Australia for medical attention. But nothing has happened. Two weeks ago, Shamim left this message for her former teachers.

SHAMIM: I'm not OK that's why I haven't been replying to you guys. I'm so sorry for it, I'm not well, so I'm really sorry that I see your messages but I haven't replied to any of them.

TRACEY DONEHUE: I worry about all of them, where they're going to you know, when this gonna end, and if it takes much longer that you know certain people won't be able to keep holding on.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: Early next year, Shamim will turn 18. After three birthdays in Nauru, she says she just wants that next one to be a happy day.

SHAMIM: I don't care what country it is. But I just want to study good and have a good time and healthy and safety and happy. Not too much happy, not every happiness from the world, just a small, just a small piece from those every happiness. We just want to make like good friends and have a good times like you, like everyone in other country who is safe, have in their home sweet home, and staying there and studying and playing, everything. I just want to be same person like everyone.