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GENEVA, Switzerland, June 8 (UPI) -- A United Nations official who leaked a report that French peacekeepers were sexually abusing children has quit in protest over the U.N.'s failure to act on the allegations. Anders Kompass, a Swede who serves as director of field operations at the U.N. human rights office in Geneva, announced his resignation Tuesday, citing the "complete impunity" of those responsible for the crimes.
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He will leave his position in August after 30 years with the United Nations.
Kompass was suspended last year after revealing in 2014 claims of sexual abuse of children as young as 8 by French troops in the Central African Republic. A U.N. investigation eventually exonerated him and he was reinstated.
But now Kompass has said that he can no longer work for an organization with no accountability.
"The complete impunity for those who have been found to have, in various degrees, abused their authority, together with the unwillingness of the hierarchy to express any regrets for the way they acted towards me sadly confirms that lack of accountability is entrenched in the United Nations. This makes it impossible for me to continue working there," he told the IRIN news agency.
French authorities insist that they are still investigating abuse allegations against 14 soldiers and will punish anyone found responsible.
A study by independent experts in December revealed "gross institutional failure" by the United Nations in its response to abuse allegations.
The 97-page report, which was submitted to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said U.N. officials were slow to respond to the allegations and allowed documents to "pass from inbox to inbox" without any resolution.
After receiving the report, Ban issued a statement saying it "depicts a United Nations that failed to respond meaningfully when faced with information about reprehensible crimes against vulnerable children...though the soldiers who committed the abuses were not under United Nations command, the report shows that the United Nations, which uncovered the abuse, did not subsequently handle the case with the speed, care or sensitivity required."
So far there has been limited fallout from the allegations. In June 2015, the U.N.'s peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic launched an investigation into an alleged sexual assault of an underage girl by one of its personnel. This led to the resignation of Babacar Gaye, U.N. envoy to the Central African Republic.
A French peacekeeping soldier was accused of sexually abusing a teenage girl in the Central African Republic in September, following the suspension of two French soldiers in nearby Burkina Faso for similar crimes.
U.N. Watch, a human rights body in Geneva, called for Ban to mount an inquiry in the light of Kompass's resignation.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, told The Guardian that the U.N.'s secretary general and its human rights chief, Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad, needed to apologize fully to Kompass, who had been a "hero" for trying to protect abused children "in contrast to other U.N. officials, including at the highest levels, who did everything to protect both governments and their own careers.
"The UN keeps saying their policy is 'zero- tolerance' yet what we see from the top down is the opposite: a neglect of the women and children who are abused by peacekeepers and a policy of giving impunity to the abusers."
