[Near Verbatim]
Juba - It is a great honor for me to pay tribute, on behalf of the mission, to read the eulogy for our great friend, colleague and comrade, Nicholas ‘Fink’ Haysom.
Fink, your life is far too vast to fit into these few minutes. Entire chapters—especially your work in South Africa’s liberation struggle and the years that followed—deserve their own telling, and they will be told, properly, elsewhere.
Today, we hold just a few threads. Not the whole tapestry—but enough to remind us of the man we knew, and the gifts you leave behind.
The first gift, Fink, is your unwavering commitment to justice and human rights. Not as abstract ideals, but as something lived, argued, defended—sometimes stubbornly, always courageously.
You believed in the promise of the United Nations, not because it was perfect, but because it was necessary. And you carried that belief into every room, every negotiation, every impossible situation. Even when the institution faltered, your conviction rarely did.
You showed up where it mattered most—in the world’s most difficult places. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and, of course, South Sudan. Contexts where the stakes were high and the human cost was never abstract.
And yet, you never lost sight of the people behind the politics.
You held the line on principle, while engaging fully with reality. You reminded those around you that the ideals of the United Nations are not distant aspirations, they are choices we are called upon to make, every day, especially in the hardest of places.
The second gift, Fink, is your mind—your ability to grasp the essence of a moment.
You had a rare instinct to cut through the noise and confusion, to see what really mattered, and then to think strategically about what could be done. Not in theory, but in practice.
You reminded us that timing matters. That words matter. That understanding people—their fears, their pride, their interests—matter.
Many of us learned that not from books, but from watching you work.
And the third gift, Fink, was your humanity.
Your sense of humor. Your enjoyment of life. Your ability to bring lightness into heavy places.
You knew when to push hard—but also when to step back, share a drink, tell a story, and remind us that this work, however serious, is still human work.
You made teams stronger. You made difficult environments more bearable. And you made people feel seen.
Fink, you were also part of a generation that is slowly passing—a generation shaped by struggle, by history, by a kind of hard-earned realism. But what set you apart is that you did not hold that experience tightly. You shared it—generously.
You mentored. You taught. You encouraged. You welcomed younger colleagues into the fold of peacemaking—not as a closed circle, but as a calling that needed renewal.
Many of us carry your lessons, often without even realizing it.
The questions you asked.
The standards you set.
The quiet nudges—and sometimes not-so-quiet critiques.
You prepared people, not just to do the work, but to understand what it costs—and why it still matters.
And finally, there is South Sudan.
You left in 2025 with a deep sense of disappointment at the evolution of the political situation here. You saw, more clearly than most, the gap between promise and reality.
You were not one to dress that up.
But if you were standing here now—speaking directly to leaders, to colleagues, to all of us—you would not leave us in despair.
You would insist on honesty. On frankness. On accountability. On learning the right lessons—not the convenient ones.
You would remind us that peace is not built on declarations, but on action. On courage. On compromise that is real, not performative.
And you would probably tell us, in your own way, to do better.
So, Fink, we will not pretend to sum you up. We cannot.
But we can say this:
You stood for justice when it was difficult.
You brought clarity when things were uncertain.
And you brought humanity—always—into spaces that desperately needed it.
Those are your gifts to us.
And now, it is on us to carry them forward.
Thank you, Fink.