Ruud Lubbers, who was the UN high commissioner for refugees, said that “concrete evidence” was “scarce”

More than a dozen international aid organisations are implicated in a sex-for-food scandal documented by an official United Nations report that has never been published.

The Times has obtained a copy of the 84-page document produced by research teams working in refugee camps in west Africa for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Save the Children in 2001. It identified more than 40 aid organisations “whose workers are alleged to be in sexually exploitative relationships with refugee children”.

Many were small local charities but the list included 15 international organisations including the UNHCR and the World Food Programme and the British charities Save the Children and Merlin. International NGOs including Médecins Sans Frontières, Care International, the International Rescue Committee, the International Federation