The United Nations’ outgoing human rights chief has said Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s civilian leader, should have resigned over the military’s violent crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya minority.

But in a sign of the divergent international response to the crisis, the Nobel Peace Prize authorities have said they will not withdraw the human rights prize she won in 1991 in the wake of this week's damning UN report that said Burma’s military leadership should be investigated and tried for genocide.

Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, whose term as UN high commissioner for human rights ends on Friday, told the BBC that Aung San Suu Kyi should have considered going back to house arrest rather than excusing the military.

His comments were made a few days after a searing UN investigation that accused Burma’s top military leaders of having “genocidal intent” in an army campaign that subjected the Rohingya to gangrape, mass murder and the torching of their homes, forcing at least 700,000 to flee.