Nicholas Haysom

Nicholas Roland Leybourne "Fink" Haysom (21 April 1952 – 19 March 2026) was a South African lawyer 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.^[1]

Haysom was educated at Michaelhouse in Natal, South Africa. Subsequently, he earned a degree in law from the University of Natal and the University of Cape Town,^[1] where was president of the Students Representative Council. He later received honorary Doctor of Law degrees from the University of Cape Town (2012)^[2] and the New York Law School (2019).^[3]

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.^[4] He was jailed four times by the regime, including periods where he was kept in solitary confinement.^[5][6]

Haysom served as an associate professor of law and deputy director at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand until May 1994.

In 1979 he joined two fellow academics from the University of Witwatersrand, Halton Cheadle and Clive Thompson, as founding partners of the human rights law firm Cheadle Thompson & Haysom Attorneys in Johannesburg. Haysom served as a senior lawyer with the practice and litigated high-profile human rights cases as an attorney of the High Court of South Africa from 1981 to 1993.

From 1994 to 1999 Haysom was the chief legal and constitutional adviser to the government of South Africa during the presidency of Nelson Mandela.^[1][7] From 1999 to 2002 he was involved in the Burundi peace talks as chair of the committee negotiating constitutional issues.^[1] He was also the principal adviser to the mediator in the Sudanese peace process from 2002 to 2005.^[1]

After joining the United Nations in 2005, Haysom served as head of the Office of Constitutional Support for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq until 2007.^[7] From 2007 to 2012 he was in charge of political, peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.^[8] 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.^[9][10] Succeeding Haile Menkerios, he was appointed Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan in 2016.^[11]

In 2018, Ban's successor as Secretary-General, António Guterres, appointed Haysom as his Special Representative for Somalia and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia.^[12] He was expelled from the country on 1 January 2019, after only four months in the role,^[13] 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.^[14]

Haysom then served as the Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Sudan from 2019 to 2020^[13] and on Southern Africa from 2020 to 2021.^[1] In 2021 Guterres announced Haysom's appointment as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan.^[1]

Haysom died in New York City on 19 March 2026, at the age of 73.^[15] He was remembered by Guterres as a "tireless peacemaker and steadfast champion of the values of the United Nations".^[7]

• Ruling with the Whip: A report on the Violation of Human Rights in the Ciskei. Johannesburg: Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Whitwatersrand. 1983. ISBN 9780854948000.
• Carnegie II Conference Papers: Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa. Cape Town: Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town. 1984. ISBN 9780799208535.
  • Haysom, Nicholas; Thompson, Clive. "Farm labour and the law" (PDF). Carnegie Conference Paper No. 84.
  • Haysom, Nicholas; Armstrong, Amanda. "Population relocation and the law: Social engineering on a vast scale" (PDF). Carnegie Conference Paper No. 86.
  • Haysom, Nicholas; Khoza, Modise. "Trade Unions in the Homelands" (PDF). Carnegie Conference Paper No. 110.
• Constitutional Court for South Africa. Johannesburg: Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand. 1991. ISBN 9781874856535. OCLC 502427946.
• Dugard, John; Haysom, Nicholas; Marcus, Gilbert (1992). The Last Years Of Apartheid: Civil Liberties In South Africa. New York: Ford Foundation and Foreign Policy Association. ISBN 9780871241450. OCLC 801787619.
• Mabangalala: The Rise of Right-Wing Vigilantes in South Africa. Johannesburg: Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand. 1996. ISBN 9780854949199.
• Cheadle, Halton; Davis, Dennis; Haysom, Nicholas (2002). South African Constitutional Law: The Bill of Rights (1st ed.). Johannesburg: Butterworths. ISBN 9780409018233.

• haysom Nicholas Haysom at People.com