A former United Nations official has been jailed for sexually abusing children in Nepal after a trial that underscored the country’s growing appeal for foreign paedophiles.

Peter John Dalglish, 62, a high-profile humanitarian worker from Canada, was sentenced on Monday to two separate terms of nine years and seven years after being convicted last month.

Thakur Trital, a district court official, told Agence France-Presse that Dalglish had been sentenced to nine years for abusing a 12-year-old boy and seven years for molesting a 14-year-old.

“The judge is yet to decide whether he should serve a total 16 years in jail or be released after nine years. In most cases of a similar nature, sentences get overlapped but it is upon the judge to decide,” Trital said.

Dalglish has also been told to pay compensation of 500,000 Nepalese rupees (£3,600) to each of his victims.

Dalglish was arrested in April 2018 in Kavrepalanchowk district, near Kathmandu, by Nepal’s Central Investigation Bureau.

The two boys were at the house where police detained Dalglish, investigators said.

Dalglish denied the charges, and his lawyer could not be reached for comment.

The aid worker, who was awarded the Order of Canada in 2016, made his name advocating for street children, child labourers and those affected by war.

In the 1980s, he co-founded Street Kids International, which merged with Save the Children.

In the past decade, Dalglish held key positions in UN agencies, including head of UN-Habitat in Afghanistan in 2015. In Nepal, Dalglish was an adviser to the International Labour Organization in the early 2000s.

Weak law enforcement has made Nepal notorious for sexual abusers, with several arrests and convictions in recent years.

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, and in 2010 a French charity worker, Jean-Jacques Haye, was convicted of raping 10 children at a Kathmandu orphanage.