CANBERRA – A Royal Commission into child sex abuse in Australia has been asked to include recent allegations of abuse on children in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres, including the asylum seeker processing camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

Allegations of abuse at the offshore processing camps have been referred to the commission, which is examining child sex abuse in institutional settings in Australia.

This commission is separate and running parallel to the Senate inquiry underway this week into allegations of abuse and inhumane conditions specifically at the Nauru refugee centre.

Greens senator and immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young has written to the Royal Commission asking it to include the claims of abuse on Nauru, first detailed in an inquiry carried out by former integrity commissioner Phillip Moss.

While demanding immigration authorities hand over a series of documents in a move that could eventually widen to see Australia’s mainland refugee centres become a target of the inquiry, the commission has ruled out investigating any alleged child abuse on Nauru or Manus Island saying both locations fall outside its jurisdictional powers.

“The issue of alleged child sexual abuse in Australia’s immigration detention centres is currently being considered by the commissioners,” the chairman of the Royal Commission, Justice Peter McClellan, wrote in a reply to Senator Hanson-Young.

But Justice McClellan indicated he did not have the jurisdiction to probe allegations of abuse in other countries – such as the Nauru-based detention centre.

“The commission is of a view that it cannot investigate events that occur within another country,” he wrote.

While the commission’s work to date has focused largely on historical matters, its terms of reference do not prevent it from investigating more recent concerns, the ABC contends.

The Immigration Department has confirmed that it had been asked to provide information to the commission on several occasions since 2013.

But in a statement a spokeswoman said the documents the commission had sought were not related to child abuse in immigration detention facilities.

The ABC understands the commission’s requests relate to historical cases.

Refugee Council of Australia chief executive Paul Power said there were current allegations of abuse which warranted investigation.

“These allegations of abuse are actually very recent, in fact current in a number of cases,” he said.

“So while the Royal Commission has looked at a whole lot of issues in previous decades, here we have situations of allegations of abuse that are happening right now.”

The Royal Commission – established by former prime minister Julia Gillard in 2012 – has the ability to investigate churches, charities, community organisations and government bodies. It also has the power to recommend criminal charges.

Senator Hanson-Young said the commission’s inability to investigate abuse allegations in offshore detention centres raised “serious questions”.

“Governments of both persuasions have an extremely poor record of protecting children in detention and have done everything they can to hide what’s been going on,” she said.

Senator Hanson-Young said: “Refugee children are already extremely vulnerable and the fact that some of them have been subjected to further abuse and assault is sickening and must be exposed.” There were 88 children in detention on Nauru and 132 in detention facilities in Australia as of May 14.