"I felt like I was born again." Hani was 17 when she fled her war-torn home in a tiny boat.

Hani Abdile was 17 when she left her family behind to flee the bloody, protracted civil war that had consumed her country for more than two decades.

Famine was rife, more than 500,000 people had been killed and, quoting Somali poet Warsan Shire, the now 21-year-old told Mamamia “no one leaves home, unless home [is the] mouth of a shark”.

From Somalia, Hani made it to Malaysia where, after five days confined to a dark room, a people smuggler promised her passage to Australia via Indonesia aboard a tiny fishing boat.

Forced to hide from authorities, she and the other asylum seekers were concealed beneath a wooden covering, while the smuggler pretended to be fishing from the deck above.

“I couldn’t actually breathe,” she said.

“And I felt like, while I was alive, I was inside a coffin.”

Somehow she survived, but the journey only became more treacherous.

Just two days after leaving the shores of Indonesia, the boat began taking on water. By day eight, she and the other 44 passengers were being plucked from the ocean by the Australian Navy, as shards of the flimsy vessel drifted around them like broken glass.

"When I come to the big [Navy] ship and, you know, touched the metal, I felt like I was born again," she said.

"I felt like the sea gave me a second chance."

Like Hani, 51 per cent of the world’s refugees in 2016 were made up of children forced to flee their homes or forcibly taken from their families.

I will be on radio today about talking about and the tour at 10:30 its Eastside Radio stay tuned good people.

A post shared by Hanita (@abdilehani) on Feb 9, 2017 at 2:10pm PST

According to UNHCR, more than 75,000 asylum claims last year were received from refugee children travelling alone, though it's believed that figure is vastly underestimated.

During the 11 months she was held on Christmas Island after being rescued, Hani found healing in learning English and writing poetry.

An honorary member of PEN, a lead writer for the Writing Through Fences group, Hani has received numerous awards for her community work and many achievements since being released from immigration detention.

Her first book I Will Rise was published in 2016 to critical acclaim.

June 20 is World Human Refugee Day. For more information, please visit the United Nations website.