Navi Pillay, South African rights champion, wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO – The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday (9) to South Africa’s Navi Pillay, the judge who headed the Rwanda genocide tribunal and who last year presided over a UN commission which accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Pillay, currently a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case where Myanmar also stands accused of genocide, has been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

She reacted to the news by making a quip about US President Donald Trump’s well-documented desire to win the prize himself.

“If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” the 85-year-old said during a standing ovation captured by Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard in Nuremberg and posted on the social network X.

Pillay headed the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the world body, and which last year found that genocide was occurring in Gaza.

She told AFP at the time that her team had shared “thousands of pieces of information” with prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The UN said the prize for Pillay, 85, was testimony to the “value” of rights “more than ever”.

The Nobel jury said it was honouring her at a time when “the system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack.”

“At a time of existential challenges – including more wars and conflicts than the world has seen in a long time – international law is no longer just a supplement to peace and security. It is an absolute necessity,” Frydnes said.

“Navi Pillay’s commitment to universal legal principles and her firm moral compass are constants in a long career,” the committee said.

In a world ravaged by conflicts and crises, 287 individuals and organizations had been nominated for the ultimate diplomatic and humanitarian accolade this year.

– Trump’s hopes for prize –

The prize for Pillay is sure to anger Trump, whose administration has repeatedly attacked international justice institutions.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has made no secret of his desire to win the prize, insisting that he was the most deserving candidate and claiming to have ended up to eight wars.

“They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me…  and I think it would be a great discredit to them,” Trump had said on Wednesday (7).

But his war against Iran, his territorial expansion ambitions as in Greenland, his hard line on migrants, and his attacks on multilateralism and the media have, according to experts in Oslo, disqualified him for the prize.

Last year, the prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, a choice generally considered palatable to Trump.

Machado even gave him her Nobel gold medal, judging he deserved it after the capture of President Nicolas Maduro – though she failed to obtain his political backing in exchange.

The reasons given by the Nobel Committee for choosing Peace Prize winners have changed substantially since 1901, shifting from promoting peace to defending human rights in a trend that gained momentum during the Cold War, according to an AFP analysis.

The Nobel committee meanwhile says it is not swayed by external pressures.

“Of course we have to discuss it, but it’s not like that influences the discussions in the room and decisions that come out,” the secretary of the committee, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told AFP ahead of the prize announcement.

The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million.

The award will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prizes’ creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

The Peace Prize is the only Nobel awarded in Oslo, with the other disciplines announced in Stockholm.

Earlier this week, the prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were announced in Stockholm, with the latter going to Canadian poet Anne Carson on Thursday (8) for her modern twists on Greek mythology and antiquity.

The 2026 Nobel season winds up Monday (12) with the economics prize.

– Groundbreaking –

Born the daughter of a bus driver in South Africa’s east coast city of Durban in 1941 to a family of Tamil descent, Pillay has had a groundbreaking career.

She grew up in a poor neighbourhood in the southeastern coastal city during white minority rule, and studied law at the University of Natal before attaining a Master’s and Doctorate from Harvard.

She became the first non-white woman to open a law firm in Durban where she carved out a reputation as a doughty defender of apartheid opponents.

In 1973 she won the right for political prisoners in the notorious Robben Island penal colony –- where jailed anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was held at the time -– to have access to lawyers.

A year after Mandela became president in South Africa’s first democratic vote in 1994, she made legal history by becoming the first woman of colour to be appointed to the country’s high court.

Soon after, the late liberation hero recommended her to serve on a United Nations tribunal trying Rwandan genocide suspects.

In 1998, she was among judges on the Rwanda tribunal that was the first try rape as an act of genocide.

Ten years later, Pillay was appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a role she held until 2014.

– Voice of victims –

Her upbringing in an unjust apartheid society spurred her to fight discrimination everywhere and earned her the reputation of being the voice of victims around the world.

“We put up with the worst insults and racial discrimination and abused and treated like dirt,” Pillay told AFP in an interview in 2023.

That could have made you “weak and cry” or “fight every step of the way”, she said.

“So I always had a sense of confidence about who I am and how you confront any kind of discrimination. Open your mouth and speak up, condemning it. And that’s what I did in the UN.”

The rights defender married in 1965 lawyer Gaby Pillay, who was also a political prisoner she represented while he was tortured in detention during apartheid rule.

The couple divorced and Gaby died in the late 1990s. They had two daughters.

-AFP