A Guinean, Bintou Keita, and a South African, Nicholas Fink Haysom, will become respectively UN envoys to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, we learned Thursday from the United Nations.
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For the DRC, the new UN representative, whose appointment has been officially announced by the UN, will have to manage one of the most important and difficult peacekeeping operations carried out in the world.
Born in 1958, Bintou Keita was until now UN Under-Secretary-General for Africa, after having been Assistant to Peacekeeping Operations (2017).
She joined the United Nations in 1989 and has held positions in Darfur (2015) and at the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).
In February, she will succeed Algerian Leila Zerrougui who will have spent three years in the DRC.
According to diplomats, the function of emissary in this country is particularly demanding.
The Monusco peace mission has around 15,000 peacekeepers, with an annual budget of around one billion dollars.
His mandate was renewed in December for one year by the UN Security Council with a cautious beginning of disengagement spread over several years, with no end date set.
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The Security Council also endorsed Thursday the choice of Secretary General Antonio Guterres to assign Nicholas Fink Haysom as envoy for South Sudan to replace New Zealander David Shearer, according to diplomats.
Born in 1952, Nicholas Fink Haysom has already worked for the UN on the issues of Sudan and South Sudan, and among others in Somalia from which he was expelled in 2019, accused by the government of interference in the internal affairs of country.
During his career, he has also been stationed in Afghanistan (2012-2016) and Iraq (2005-2007).
The UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (Minuss) is the most expensive of the UN's current peacekeeping operations, with an annual budget exceeding one billion dollars.
Its authorized strength in the field reaches 17,000 peacekeepers.
A recent independent study carried out for the UN recommended reducing this number to 15,000.
Two years after its independence, conquered after a bloody conflict with Khartoum, South Sudan was the scene for six years of a deadly civil war (380,000 victims) which officially ended in February 2020 with the creation of a government of national unity.
But intercommunal violence continues there and even increased last year.