A Special Envoy of the Secretary-General (SESG) is a senior United Nations official appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General to deal with a set of specific issues.
Examples include the SESGs on HIV/AIDS in Africa, on LRA-affected areas, on indigenous people, to a specific country etc. George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, was chosen by the UN to serve as the Special Envoy to South Asia in December 2005. Others include Bill Clinton,[1] a former president of the United States, was named the Special Envoy to Haiti in 2009, and, in July 2012, Gordon Brown, a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was named the special envoy on Global Education.[2] For much of 2012 Kofi Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, was Joint Special Envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League for Syria. There are many other people of different backgrounds who serve the Secretary-General.