AUSTRALIA bowed to pressure from the UN yesterday over a Somali woman raped in the Nauru detention camp who wants an abortion.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said yesterday that the woman, known by the pseudonym Abyan, would be flown to Australia for the procedure after she alleged she had been raped.

Canberra pays the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, whose population numbers just 10,000, to host the camp where Abyan was sent.

On Tuesday the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) demanded that Abyan be given a second opportunity after being denied a termination of her 15-week pregnancy earlier this month.

She was flown 2,500 miles to Sydney on October 11 but returned five days later still pregnant. The government claimed she had changed her mind about the abortion.

But Abyan said in a statement from Nauru that she had not changed her mind, but had been denied an interpreter and counselling.

Abortion is legal until 20 weeks in Australia but illegal in Nauru.

The case of has highlighted Australia’s draconian policy of imprisoning asylum-seekers in squalid camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Mr Dutton claimed he was concerned that 240 asylum-seekers who flew to Australia for medical treatment then got court injunctions preventing their return to Nauru.

He said that Abyan would return to Australia to consult a doctor and receive mental health support, but would not say when.

The minister denied that the move was prompted by the OHCHR.