NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF SOUTH AFRICA PRESENTS CREDENTIALS TO DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF UNITED NATIONS OFFICE AT GENEVA

Nozipho Joyce Mxakato-Diseko, the new Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations Office at Geneva, today presented her credentials to Michael Møller, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Prior to her appointment to Geneva, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko had been the Deputy Director General for Global Governance and Continental Agenda at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation since 2012. In 2015 and 2016, she was also the chair of the Group 77 and China, and South Africa’s lead negotiator, in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, which had resulted in the Paris Agreement. Between 2012 and 2016, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko served as sherpa for the Post-2015 Development Agenda, G20, and the Nuclear Security Summit. She had been an Ambassador at Large for climate change since 2011.

Between 2009 and 2012, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko worked as the Deputy Director General for the Americas and the Caribbean at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. Prior to that, from 2004 to 2009, she was the National Commissioner to the Public Service Commission. Between 2000 and 2003, she performed the roles of the Chief Commissioner of the International Trade Administration Commission and the Vice Chairperson of the Board of the National Nuclear Regulatory Authority. From 1996 to 2000, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko concurrently served as the South African Ambassador to Austria, the United Nations Office at Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. Between 1994 and 1996, she was the Chief Director for Policy Planning at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Before the 1994 elections in South Africa, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko worked with Thabo Mbeki, the then National Chairman of the African National Congress. From 1989 to 1991, she was the Chairperson of the African National Congress for the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 1986 and 1987, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko worked as the Director of the Oxford Development Education Centre, and between 1980 and 1988 she served as an Executive Committee Member at the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Ms. Mxakato-Diseko started her career as a secondary school teacher in Johannesburg in 1975.

Born on 1 November 1956 in Johannesburg, Ms. Mxakato-Diseko holds graduate and post graduate degrees from Oxford University.



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CR16/021E