Nicholas Haysom

Nicholas Roland Leybourne "Fink" Haysom (21 April 1952 – 17 March 2026) was a South African lawyer, anti-apartheid activist and diplomat whose work focused on democratic governance, constitutional and electoral reforms, reconciliation and peace processes. From 2021 to his death, he served as the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. His father had served with the British Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain and his mother, who had studied at the University of Oxford, was an anti-apartheid activist. He was initially mis-labelled "Finkelstein" at birth, resulting in the life-long nickname "Fink". and serving briefly in the South African Navy, and later received honorary Doctor of Law degrees from the University of Cape Town and the New York Law School (2019).

In 1976, Haysom became president of the National Union of South African Students at a time when the anti-apartheid student organization was in disarray following the arrest of many of its leaders. He was jailed four times by the regime, including periods when he was kept in solitary confinement.

Career Academic and legal work During the 1980s and early 1990s, Haysom was a lawyer for the human rights law firm Cheadle Thompson & Haysom Attorneys in Johannesburg, which he had founded with two fellow academics from the University of Witwatersrand, Halton Cheadle and Clive Thompson. His caseload included negotiating in disputes between Cyril Ramaphosa, then a mineworkers' leader, and the white-owned mining companies. In that role he helped to draft a new constitution for South Africa that enshrined equal rights for Black people, minorities and white people. In 2012, Haysom was appointed Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and in 2014 he was promoted to Special Representative of the mission. Assessing the limits of his work for the United Nations in Iraq and Afghanistan led him to "increasingly appreciate what Mandela brought to the table – which was somebody who was bigger than the divisions in society: the absence of a unifying figure in either Iraq or Afghanistan is noticeable". Two years later, in 2018, Ban's successor as Secretary-General, António Guterres, appointed him as his Special Representative for Somalia and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia. He was expelled from the country on 1 January 2019, after only four months in the role, by the Somali government of Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, which claimed that he had threatened the sovereignty of the country after questioning the legal basis of the arrest of Mukhtar Robow. The United Nations Security Council expressed regret at Somalia's decision to expel a United Nations envoy who questioned the arrest of an extremist group defector-turned-political candidate.

Haysom then served as the Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Sudan from 2019 to 2020 In 2021, Guterres announced Haysom's appointment as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan.

Personal life and death Haysom was married twice: first to Mary Ann Cullinan, with whom he had two daughters and a son; and subsequently to Delphine Bost, with whom he had a further two sons. as a result of "heart and lung complications".

He was remembered by Guterres as a "tireless peacemaker and steadfast champion of the values of the United Nations". South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that Haysom's "commitment to justice and peace made our country, our continent and the world a better place".

Works