KABUL - A senior United Nations official with personal experience of South Africa’s own path to reconciliation last week told members of the body leading Afghanistan’s peace negotiations not to lose hope and keep moving forward.

“Peace negotiation is like riding a bicycle – everything is alright when it is moving but if you [try to] stand still, you will fall,” the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, said at a gathering on 30 April of members and senior officials of the Afghan High Peace Council (HPC).

Mr. Haysom, a South African national responsible for political affairs at the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), was invited by the HPC to share his thoughts on how South Africa’s post-apartheid experience could be relevant to Afghanistan.

Mr. Haysom was closely involved in the constitutional negotiations leading up to the interim and final constitutions in his home country. He served as chief legal adviser throughout Nelson Mandela’s presidency until 1999 and continued to work with Mr. Mandela on his private peace initiatives up to 2002.

In his remarks to the HPC members, the UN official noted that the Afghan peace process was quite different from that of South Africa "because Afghanistan has unique circumstances, history and a complex regional environment."

Highlighting the importance of making any peace process inclusive, Mr. Haysom told the audience to “create space in negotiations to engage people. Both sides should have [their] ownership in a peace process. In Afghanistan, there is a real need for a truly inclusive peace.”

At the core of UNAMA’s mandate – which was renewed by the UN Security Council in March for another year – is the support, at the request of the Afghan authorities, to the organization of future elections, and peace and reconciliation efforts as the country continues its political and security transition.

The UN mission’s support in the area of reconciliation includes providing outreach as well as good offices to support the Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process as well as proposing and supporting confidence-building measures within the framework of the Afghan Constitution.

“UNAMA continues to promote confidence and trust-building measures to further Government efforts, including through the provision of support to the [High Peace] Council and to regional cooperation, engagement on the sanctions regime and facilitation of inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue on visions of the future, including throughout the country,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his latest report to the Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan.

Afghan peace negotiators have been holding talks with elements of the armed opposition in order to end the suffering endured by the Afghan people over decades of conflict.

Mr. Haysom said it was important to negotiate a ceasefire to create a conducive environment for Afghanistan’s peace process. Citing an example of near breakdown of the South African peace process due to a nationwide outbreak of violence during its early days, he stated that Afghanistan’s entire process will be held hostage by “what is happening outside of the negotiating room.”

The UN official also stressed the importance of not proceeding to the most difficult challenges at the beginning of any peace process. “One can only accomplish limited objectives at the beginning and then proceed deliberately and perhaps gradually after confidence has been built,” he noted.

Besides his experience in native country, Mr. Haysom also worked on constitutional reform, electoral reform, conflict resolution, good governance, and democracy-strengthening in several countries in Africa and Asia. Most notably he was involved in the Burundi peace talks as the chairman of the committee negotiating constitutional issues from 1999 to 2002 and served as the principal adviser to the Mediator in the Sudanese Peace Process from 2002 to 2005. From April 2005 to mid-2007 he was the head of the Office of Constitutional Support in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq.