UN aid worker suspended for leaking child abuse report

A United Nations aid worker has been suspended after being found leaking a confidential UN report about child abuse, according to a statement of the secretary general's spokesman released Wednesday.

The United Nations, through its Office of Human Rights in Bangui, conducted a human rights investigation in late spring of 2014, following serious allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of children by French military personnel, according to the statement.

According to media reports, the French soldiers sexually abused starving young boys at a center for internally displaced people in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic between December 2013 and June 2014.

"The unedited version of the investigation report was, by a staff member's own admission, provided unofficially by that staff member to the French authorities in July 2014, prior to even providing it to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights'(OHCHR) senior management," it said.

"This constitutes a serious breach of protocol, which, as is well known to all OHCHR officials, requires redaction of any information that could endanger victims, witnesses and investigators," said the statement.

The staff member has been placed on administrative leave with full pay pending the results of the investigation, it said.

The Guardian cited sources close to the case, saying that " Anders Kompass passed the document to the French authorities because of the UN's failure to take action to stop the abuse."

According to The Guardian, the report was passed to officials within OHCHR in Geneva in summer in 2014. When nothing happened, Kompass sent the report to the French authorities and they visited Bangui and began an investigation.

However, the UN statement said "Our preliminary assessment is that such conduct does not constitute whistleblowing."