United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on Friday the appointment of Nicholas Haysom of South Africa as his Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan. He will succeed Eritrean diplomat Haile Menkerios.

The special envoy role is a political position apart from the special representatives heading the UN peacekeeping missions in South Sudan, Abyei and Darfur.

Haysom is a lawyer by background who has previously also served as Ban Ki-moon's special representative for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). He was also for several years a director for political affairs, peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs in Ban Ki-moon's New York office, and he served for about two years in the UN's Iraq office.

Prior to his service with the UN, Haysom worked in the South African governemnt as chief legal and constitutional adviser in the Office of the President from 1994 to 1999. He was involved in the Burundi peace talks as chair of the committee negotiating constitutional issues, from 1999 to 2002 under the facilitation of the late former President Nelson Mandela, and was an advisor in Sudanese peace talks from 2002 to 2005.