Researchers from the University of Birmingham and Ontario University spoke to 2,500 people in Haiti, asking them about their experience of the UN’s Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (Minustah) which became one of the longest-running peacekeeping mission.

More than 10%, 265 people, described stories which featured children fathered by peacekeeping agents.

Researchers said a common theme in the stories was transactional sex, with peacekeepers paying young women and leaving after a baby was fathered.

Peacekeepers were frequently repatriated after a pregnancy was made known.

In one instance, a 14-year-old girl became pregnant after getting involved with a Brazilian soldier who was working as a peacekeeper. He told her he would help with the child, but left the country.

She has not received any support from him, the UN, or the Haitian state, and cannot afford to send her son, now four years old, to school, after being kicked out of her family home . . .