A court in Nepal has sentenced a former UN official to nine years in jail for sexually abusing two boys, a court official said on Tuesday.

Canadian man Peter Dalglish, a former high-profile humanitarian worker, was sentenced on Monday to terms of nine and seven years in two cases, after being convicted last month.

As the sentences will overlap, he will be in jail for nine years in total, Kavre District Court official Thakur Chandra Trital said Tuesday.

The court also ordered Dalglish to pay 500,000 Nepali rupees (€4,000, $4,500) in compensation to each of the boys, Trital added.

A special police unit from Kathmandu raided his home in Kavre district in April 2018 and found him with two boys aged 12 and 14.

Investigating officials had said Dalglish lured children from poor families with promises of an education, jobs and trips, and then sexually abused them.

Read more: The Oxfam scandal is just one aspect of the aid industry's ugly power problem

A long-time humanitarian

Dalglish's humanitarian work has focused on advocating for street children, child laborers and those affected by war.

He co-founded Street Kids International in the 1980s, which merged with Save the Children, and he has worked for decades for a number of humanitarian agencies, including UN Habitat in Afghanistan and the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response in Liberia.

In 2016 he was awarded the Order of Canada, the country's second-highest civilian honor.

In 2015 a Canadian orphanage volunteer, Ernest MacIntosh, 71, was sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually abusing a disabled 15-year-old boy, while in 2010 French charity worker Jean-Jacques Haye was convicted of raping 10 children at a Kathmandu orphanage.

Dalglish's conviction comes as the aid sector faces scrutiny following allegations that aid organization Oxfam covered up its investigation into staff paying for sex while working as part of the response team for the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

law/rc (AP, dpa, AFP)

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