Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former UN human rights chief whose career has spanned from defending the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to leading a panel that found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote international law as it comes under attack. Her win signals a high-profile rebuke to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of the UN commission she led on Gaza. The leaders also have been highly critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; Pillay has worked at both.
Pillay’s work “is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world”, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing her win in Oslo, Norway, as part of the peace prize’s 125th anniversary. Read moreSouth Africa's Navi Pillay wins 2026 Nobel Peace Prize The committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict, and Watne Frydnes said Pillay’s award was a message to those seeking to undermine “the international rules-based system and the institutions”. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.
One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Pillay, 85, received the news while attending a forum in Nuremberg, Germany, where the trials of Nazi war criminals helped lay the foundations of international law.
She was in the same room where the trials were held when the prize was announced in Norway. She said efforts to weaken international criminal justice “endanger the progress painstakingly made since Nuremberg, and they risk returning us to a world in which power, rather than law, determines whose suffering matters”. World leaders, she added, have a “legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war”.
Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the UN-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. Read moreIsrael is committing 'genocide' in Gaza, UN investigators say Gaza was among Pillay’s first comments Friday after hearing she had won.
The commission last year also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defence minister "have incited the commission of genocide”. Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the accusations. Pillay has repeatedly rebuffed critics who accused her of anti-Semitism or turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel.
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