Peter Dalglish

Peter Dalglish (born May 20, 1957) is the Canadian founder of the Street Kids International charity and a convicted child sex offender. Until 2015, he was the Country Representative for UN-Habitat in Afghanistan.

Personal life Dalglish was born in London, Ontario.

Dalglish attended Upper Canada College, where he later also taught. Dalglish was called to the Bar in 1985 after articling with Stewart MacKeen & Covert. He worked briefly in the Prime Minister's Office for Pierre Trudeau.

Trudeau appointed Dalglish the first director of Youth Service International.

He was married for five years to Nienke Schaap, and they have a daughter together. The experience convinced him to leave his law career and return to Africa to work with poor children.

Dalglish joined the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) to work in Darfur Sudan, where he organized humanitarian relief for women and children displaced by severe drought and famine. In the late 1980s, Dalglish through Street Kids International arranged to rehabilitate and equip children's schools in southern Sudan as part of Operation Lifeline and hired Emma McCune to run the project.

In 1986, Dalglish was reassigned to run the World Food Programme Road Transportation Operation in Khartoum, Sudan. After catching a child breaking into his vehicle using a bent nail, Dalglish convinced a Belgian technical training school to provide auto mechanic training to street children, funded with $50,000 from Bob Geldof. In 1987, Dalglish set up a bicycle courier service run entirely by street children in Khartoum with "$200, a borrowed office, and an American Express card", creating Street Kids International.

Mexico and Guatemala In 1986, Dalglish spent three months engaging street children in Guatemala and Mexico developing an anti-drug cartoon project, "Gold tooth", with Derek Lamb and Kaj Pindal, and two further films "Karate Kid" about HIV/AIDS and another about starting a business. In 1994, Dalglish was appointed as the first director of Youth Service Canada, the Government of Canada's civilian volunteer youth corps.

In 1997, Upper Canada College hired Dalglish to run the "Horizon Program" for inner-city youth in Toronto.

Thailand Dalglish then worked in Bangkok, helping as Father Joe Maier of the Human Development Center set up a legal-aid clinic for 8000 children in the legal system. In this role, he focused on three initiatives: return children from orphanages to their families; treat children affected by HIV/AIDS, and apprenticeship training.

Between 2006 and 2010, Dalglish served as the executive director of the South Asia Children's Fund, which promotes education for disadvantaged children in the region. Following his Afghanistan mission, Dalglish joined the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response. Daglish was stripped of that honour by the Governor General on May 16, 2026.

Child sex assault conviction Following his 2017 appointment to the board of directors for the United World College Thailand, the school held an inquiry following "speculation" Dalglish had inappropriate contact with local children - noting it did not involve their college-age students. On June 10, 2019, he was found guilty.

Nepalese police reported that Dalglish had given a confession, claiming he had sex with the boys as "revenge" because a teacher had molested him in Canada at the age of 11 - though Dalglish maintains the confession was false and coerced.

On July 8, 2019, he was sentenced to prison, though news reports vary on the length of his term.

Daglish appealed the conviction, but lost his appeal in January 2020, when the Patan High Court, while reducing the jail sentence from 9 to 8 years, upheld the conviction.

Daglish was removed from the Order of Canada in May 2026.