The recent arrest of a prominent Canadian aid worker on suspicion of child sexual abuse in Nepal points to a critical need for fundamental reforms in the humanitarian aid community to protect vulnerable children and women from sexual predators, says an expert on gender-based violence and ending child sex abuse.

Peter Dalglish, who helped found the charity Street Kids International and 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, has been charged with sexually abusing children in Nepal, authorities in the Himalayan country said Monday.

Nepal’s Central Investigation Bureau chief Pushkar Karki said Dalglish, 60, was arrested in April at his home with two Nepalese boys aged 12 and 14 after weeks of investigation. His case is being heard by a court in Kavre, a town near Kathmandu.

Police allege children were lured with a promise of education and foreign travel before they were sexually abused.

Dalglish, a recipient of Order of Canada for his humanitarian work, denies the allegations, which have not been proven in a court of law yet. He faces up to 13 years in prison if convicted.

Canadian authorities are aware of the arrest of a Canadian citizen in Nepal, Global Affairs spokesperson Philip Hannan said in an email to CBC News.

"Consular services are being provided," Hannan said, adding that "due to the provisions of the Privacy Act, no further information on this specific case can be disclosed."

A perfect cover for a paedophile

A Rohingya refugee boy carries water in the Kutupalong refugee camp, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh March 22, 2018. (Mohammad Ponir Hossain/REUTERS)

Lori Handrahan, a veteran humanitarian worker and the author of Epidemic: America's Trade in Child Rape, said international humanitarian NGOs present a perfect cover for paedophile seeking access to large numbers of vulnerable children.

“When there is an earthquake in Nepal or an earthquake in Haiti or a tsunami in Asia, a humanitarian disaster or a man-made conflict like South Sudan, you have a huge population of vulnerable children who are basically dispensable,” Handrahan told Radio Canada International in a phone interview from Washington D.C.

“So a man who gets a job with Save the Children or the Red Cross or Oxfam or a UN agency and goes to work in a humanitarian response can very easily rape and molest, and abuse many-many children, who have no way to report the abuse, have nobody protecting them.”

(click to listen to the full interview with Lori Handrahan)

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Need to monitor humanitarian workers

A woman walks carrying a suitcase on her head next to an Oxfam sign in Corail, a camp for displaced people of the 2010 earthquake, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, February 13, 2018. (Andres Martinez Casares/REUTERS)

Handrahan, who has more than two decades of experience working with international NGOs in Central Asia, Africa and the Balkans, said Dalglish’s case raises troubling questions about the willingness of international humanitarian NGOs to police themselves.

“It’s actually very easy to monitor your own employees,” Handrahan said.

Research shows that most of the predatory activity happens on the physical premises owned or operated by the humanitarian NGOs and then is shared using workplace electronic communications networks and equipment, Handrahan said.

“All every humanitarian agency has to do and must do is install very robust monitoring software and monitor the electronic infrastructure,” she said.

Similar to a home alarm where you can designate a call list of people who would get contacted when your alarm goes off when you’re away,