Human Rights Lawyer Navi Pillay Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
Ms. Pillay has served as a judge in her native South Africa and on international courts investigating war crimes. She led a U.N. panel that determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding the Israeli government rejected.
Oct. 9, 2026Updated 7:00 p.m. ET
Share full article
Video
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has
3 seconds
The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Navi Pillay, a former United Nations’ top human rights official who led a commission that determined Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians, a finding the Israeli government rejected.CreditCredit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Latest
Pinned
Jonathan WolfeAurelien Breeden and Max Bearak
Here’s the latest.
Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer and international judge, was announced on Friday as the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called her efforts to uphold a system of international law that is increasingly under attack.
While Ms. Pillay’s work spans decades, the committee’s decision to choose her this year carries distinct political undertones. She led a U.N. commission last year that said that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding that the Israeli government rejected. Ms. Pillay’s native South Africa has also spearheaded accusations of genocide against Israel in the international court system.Show more
Oct. 9, 2026, 12:49 p.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Farnaz FassihiUnited Nations reporter
Hours after the prize was awarded, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions on the International Criminal Court. “We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate,” he said in a statement.
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, condemned the action, calling it a “serious blow to our collective pursuit of international criminal justice, of which the I.C.C. is a key pillar.” Earlier Friday, he praised the Nobel committee for awarding the Peace Prize to Pillay, a former I.C.C. judge. Guterres’s dual statements captured the challenges he has faced in dealing with the United States, once regarded as the pillar of international order and law.
Image
Credit...Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Oct. 9, 2026, 12:40 p.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Johnatan ReissReporting from Tel Aviv
Israel denounces the Peace Prize decision.
Image
Palestinians waiting for food distribution in Gaza City last year.Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York TimesPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led Israel’s denunciations on Friday of the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a human rights lawyer who was drawn into the international spotlight last year when a United Nations commission she chaired found that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
In a statement, Mr. Netanyahu called the decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee misguided and said it had “lost its moral compass.” He also condemned Ms. Pillay’s work, accusing her of being prejudiced against Jews.Show more
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Oct. 9, 2026, 11:25 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Marlise Simons
One of Navi Pillay’s contributions to international law is her pioneering work on the gravity of sexual violence during conflict. As a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, she pushed from the bench to define the rape of women and children as a weapon of war instead of “collateral damage.” In 1998, when that tribunal found a former Rwandan mayor guilty of genocide, it was the first time that rape had been defined as part of genocide. Sexual violence has since been integrated in international law as a potential war crime, a crime against humanity or an act of genocide.
Oct. 9, 2026, 11:23 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Jonathan Wolfe
Navi Pillay is known for her work in conflict zones across the world.
Image
Navi Pillay received the news that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday while atttending an annual conference of human rights lawyers and judges in Nuremberg, Germany.Credit...Frank Boxler/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNavi Pillay’s life has been a journey from living in poverty in apartheid-era South Africa to becoming a celebrated human rights lawyer overseeing some of the world’s most high-profile cases, and now, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
While many know Ms. Pillay for her early work against apartheid, or more recently for leading a United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza, she has also worked on other important international human rights issues of the last few decades.
Ms. Pillay, who is of Indian Tamil origin, was born in 1941 in Durban, a city on South Africa’s east coast. Her father was a bus driver. She was one of seven children.
“Most people assume that, in my country, you are Indian, you are better off than the African people,” she said in a video shared by the U.N. Human Rights Council last year. But, she said, “All of us were poor, and we struggled together.”
In 1995, Ms. Pillay was elected by the United Nations General Assembly to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The tribunal was established to prosecute those responsible for the 1994 killings of some 800,000 people, most of them ethnic Tutsis, in a massacre now known as the Rwandan genocide.
Image
Wounded Tutsi men outside a hospital in Kigali, Rwanda, in 1994. Ms. Pillay served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to prosecute those responsible for the Rwandan genocide.Credit...Gerard Julien/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Working in the Rwanda Tribunal was extremely difficult,” Ms. Pillay said in the video shared by the Human Rights Council, noting that investigators were working out of a rural area with no supermarket, bank or postal addresses that could receive mail.
“I complained and complained about that, until I started listening to the witnesses,” she said, adding: “What am I complaining about when they’ve been through so much suffering?”
During her time on the court, she helped establish a number of important legal principles, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. She was influential in establishing that rape and sexual violence could constitute acts of genocide, and for the first time, the court charged someone with incitement to commit genocide for spreading propaganda, the committee said.
In 2003, she was appointed as a judge on the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In 2008, she became the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, serving in the position for six years. During her tenure, she worked to combat violence and discrimination and protect L.G.B.T.Q. people. She also pushed for accountability in conflict zones, including in Syria and the Occupied Palestinian territories.
“She was very strong in accountability and reconciliation,” said M.A. Sumanthiran, a former member of Sri Lanka’s Parliament, said in an interview.
Image
Ms. Pillay in Geneva in 2008, when she became the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.Credit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2013, Ms. Pillay traveled to Sri Lanka to investigate human rights abuses following the country’s 26-year civil war. A formal mechanism for investigating such crimes was set up during her tenure.
Last year, a United Nations commission led by Ms. Pillay determined that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding that the Israeli government rejected.
Ms. Pillay currently serves as a judge in a case at the International Court of Justice in which Myanmar is accused of genocide for its deadly purge of Rohingya Muslims. The country has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee under a campaign of rape, arson and killing. Myanmar has always denied accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Friday that Ms. Pillay had been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted,” calling her “one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time.”
Pamodi Waravita contributed reporting from Colombo.Show less
Oct. 9, 2026, 10:53 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Farnaz FassihiUnited Nations reporter
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, congratulated Pillay and praised her as “a champion of international law and human rights, and a steadfast, independent voice of justice amidst some of the most historic international legal cases of our time.” In a statement, Guterres said that Pillay, who served as the U.N.’s top human rights authority, had shown that the law must always prevail and that defending human rights was the surest safeguard against injustice.
“Today’s prize is a tribute to all those working to uphold and defend international law, the rule of law and human rights, and secure peace, justice and human dignity,” Guterres said.
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Oct. 9, 2026, 10:46 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Amanda Taub
Amanda Taub, a former lawyer, has reported extensively on international law.
The committee’s choice affirms the importance of international law, an implicit rebuke to Trump.
Image
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has come under particular attack by the Trump administration. Credit...Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersIn awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a leading international lawyer and judge, the Nobel Committee has affirmed the importance of international law at a moment when it is under threat, in what amounts to an implicit rebuke of President Trump and other world leaders who are increasingly hostile to that system.
“In awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wants to remind the world that the rule of law — national and international — underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts nonviolently,” the committee said in its prize announcement on Friday. But today, it continued, the judges on international courts who “guard the thin red line between order and chaos” are “sanctioned, and their institutions are attacked.”Show more
Oct. 9, 2026, 10:25 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Max Bearak
The criteria for the Peace Prize have changed over time.
Image
Albert Luthuli, a South African politician and anti-apartheid activist, arriving with his wife in Oslo, Norway, in 1961.Credit...Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesAwarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer and international judge, further solidifies a trend toward a kind of recipient quite different from a century ago.
In his will, the Swedish chemist and businessman Alfred Nobel bequeathed much of his fortune — amassed, in part, through his invention of dynamite — to creating the prizes that carry his name. For the Peace Prize, he said that the recipient “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”Show more
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Oct. 9, 2026, 9:19 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Lynsey Chutel
In South Africa, Pillay forged a career fighting apartheid.
Image
Navi Pillay, right, with Edwin Cameron, left, and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, center, in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2013.Credit...Casey Crafford/UN PhotoWhen Navi Pillay was announced as the recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, her work as a human rights lawyer and international judge was thrust into the international spotlight.
But in her native South Africa, she was already known by many for fighting apartheid.Show more
Oct. 9, 2026, 9:03 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Max Bearak
Navi Pillay closed out her brief news conference in Nuremberg, Germany, with a reminder to any heads of state that might be listening: “My message to political leaders is that you are under legal obligation,” she said. “You have a legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war.”
Oct. 9, 2026, 9:03 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Max Bearak
At a brief news conference in Nuremberg, Germany, Navi Pillay said she dedicated her award to “the survivors of international crimes and to the defenders of international justice.” She mused that “perhaps it was meant to be” that she received the news in a city whose famous post-war trials of Nazi leaders were foundational to creating the modern international justice system. But she offered a warning, too, saying that efforts to undermine the system “risk returning us to a world in which power rather than law determines whose suffering matters.”
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Oct. 9, 2026, 8:58 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Dylan Collins
Speaking at a conference of human rights lawyers in Nuremberg, Germany, Navi Pillay said she was “surprised” that some people had praised her courage. “Why would you need courage to speak the truth?” she said. “You interpret the law, you look at all the facts. So it’s an impartial, you know, impartial decision-making.”
Video
The last thing I did is the delivery of the report
CreditCredit...Agnes Callamard, via Reuters
Oct. 9, 2026, 8:56 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Dylan Collins
Navi Pillay was attending a conference of human rights lawyers in Nuremberg, Germany, when she got the news that she had been given the Nobel Peace Prize.
A video posted online by Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, showed Pillay smiling and being applauded by fellow attendees. “Thank you very much,” Pillay told the crowd. “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” she joked, apparently referring to President Trump, who has long coveted the award.
Video
CreditCredit...Agnes Callamard, via Reuters
Oct. 9, 2026, 8:06 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Mack Liederman
The Nobel Peace Prize recipient is selected in secret by five Norwegians.
Image
“There is friction” inside the room where the Nobel committee meets to select the recipient of the Peace Prize, said the director of the Nobel Institute, Kristian Berg Harpviken.Credit...Javad Parsa/NTB, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor most of the past 125 years, five Norwegians appointed by the country’s Parliament have gathered in secret to choose the winner, or winners, of the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee meets in a 19th-century mansion in Oslo called the Norwegian Nobel Institute, in a room with an oval table, a painting of Alfred Nobel — the Swedish inventor who established the prize — and rows of framed photos of past winners.
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee named the South African human rights lawyer Navi Pillay as this year’s recipient. There were 287 candidates officially nominated — 208 individuals and 79 organizations — though the committee can add its own nominees.Show more
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Oct. 9, 2026, 7:06 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Johnatan ReissReporting from Tel Aviv
Israel’s Foreign Ministry denounced the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, who had chaired a United Nations commission that accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. “Awarding Pillay the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice,” the ministry said in a post on X.
Oct. 9, 2026, 6:21 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Mack Liederman and Jonathan Wolfe
When the Nobel committee called, Pillay didn’t immediately answer.
Image
The winners of the Nobel Prizes remain a secret, even to the winners themselves until shortly before the public announcement.Credit...Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, told the world on Friday morning that Navi Pillay had won the Nobel Peace Prize. One person who hadn’t been informed yet: Ms. Pillay.
“My message to her would be: If you see a Norwegian number calling, please pick up,” Mr. Frydnes said at the announcement in Oslo. “I would love to talk to you very soon.”Show more
Oct. 9, 2026, 6:15 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Marlise Simons
Navi Pillay was at an annual conference of human rights lawyers and judges in Nuremberg, Germany, when she was suddenly led away on Friday morning local time, said Stephen Rapp, a former international prosecutor and U.S. ambassador for war crimes issues, who was there. When the news then broke, “I shouted out the news in a room with about 120 people and all broke into applause,” he said.
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Oct. 9, 2026, 6:08 a.m. ETOct. 9, 2026
Jonathan Wolfe and Nick Cumming-Bruce
Pillay is recognized for her wide-ranging work in human rights law.
Image
Navi Pillay was recognized “for her efforts to promote peace and international law,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday.Credit...Sebastian Scheiner/Associated PressNavi Pillay, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, is a South African human rights lawyer who fought against the apartheid regime and who was formerly the United Nations’ top human rights official.
She was recognized “for her efforts to promote peace and international law,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in announcing the prize in Oslo.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that the system of international law was under tremendous pressure and a shift toward “power politics” was coming at the expense of a global respect for law and justice.
“In awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wants to remind the world that the rule of law – national and international – underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts non-violently,” the committee said in a statement. “Peace requires justice.”
No comments:
Post a Comment