{"id":7830,"date":"2026-10-10T08:25:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T08:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=7830"},"modified":"2026-10-10T08:25:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T08:25:15","slug":"south-african-born-jurist-navi-pillay-wins-nobel-peace-prize-for-work-in-international-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=7830","title":{"rendered":"South African-born jurist Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize for work in international justice"},"content":{"rendered":"
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South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, sits at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Oct. 9, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OSLO, Norway \u2014 Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. 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 efforts that the award committee said promoted international law as it comes under attack.<\/p>\n

Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of the U.N. 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.<\/p>\n

Hours after the award was announced in Norway, the Trump administration imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal over investigations into the United States and its allies, including Israel.<\/p>\n

Trump railed against the decision on Friday, claiming he deserved the prize and dismissing Pillay as \u201ca liberal person who works at the United Nations who nobody has ever heard of.\u201d He later said on social media that \u201cshe, very obviously, hates Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are antidemocracy and really enemies of civilization,\u201d Trump told a rally for Republican candidates in Syracuse, New York. \u201cAnd we will not forget, Norway.\u201d<\/p>\n

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South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, center, poses with the former president of the International Criminal Court, Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi, and the director of the International Academy of the Nuremberg Principles, Christoph Safferling, at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Oct. 9, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. AP-Yonhap<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the 125th anniversary of the prize’s inception, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sought \u201cto 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. Peace requires justice,\u201d committee Chairman J\u00f8rgen Watne Frydnes said.<\/p>\n

Judges \u201cguard the thin red line between order and chaos,\u201d and the world needs jurists \u201cof courage, vision and determination, qualities that Navi Pillay demonstrates in her work on the bench.\u201d<\/p>\n

In places such as Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa, she and peers took on some of the world\u2019s most painful and sensitive legal issues and most vulnerable populations.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She said efforts to weaken international criminal justice \u201cendanger the progress painstakingly made since Nuremberg, and they risk returning us to a world in which power, rather than law, determines whose suffering matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winner led investigation that determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-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.<\/p>\n

Gaza was among Pillay\u2019s first comments Friday after hearing she had won. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening there is genocide,\u201d she said to applause.<\/p>\n

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Palestinians save their belongings from buildings destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza city, Oct. 9. AP-Yonhap<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The commission also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister \u201chave incited the commission of genocide.\u201d Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the accusations.<\/p>\n

Pillay has repeatedly rebuffed critics who accused her of antisemitism or turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel. Under her leadership, the commission also issued reports accusing Hamas of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Associated Press last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the U.N. rights chief from 2008 to 2014.<\/p>\n

Growing up under the harsh system of segregation influenced Pillay’s interest in human rights and the law. Starting with Mandela\u2019s presidency, South Africa\u2019s government has openly compared the situation faced by nonwhite people during apartheid to the Palestinians\u2019 plight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,\u201d Mandela said soon after apartheid ended.<\/p>\n

The Nobel announcement came at another critical time for Gaza, just two days after the anniversary of the Hamas-led 2023 attack that killed about 1,200 people and sparked the war. Over 74,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with their territory devastated. Saturday marks a year since a fragile ceasefire took effect, while Israeli strikes continue.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu wrote on X that the Nobel committee \u201chas lost its moral compass\u201d by awarding its highest honor to \u201ca bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award was announced less than three weeks before Israel\u2019s election, in which Netanyahu is fighting to stay in power.<\/p>\n

Award and sanctions renew focus on Trump’s feud with court<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pillay\u2019s win and the new U.S. sanctions bring renewed attention to Trump\u2019s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court, where Pillay was a judge from 2003 to 2008.<\/p>\n

In a video address, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration would \u201cban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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An illustration of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Navanethem “Navi” Pillay following the announcement of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Oct. 9. EPA-Yonhap<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sanctions block any assets the ICC as an institution has in U.S. jurisdictions and set a six-month timeline for American companies and individuals to wind down any business with the court.<\/p>\n

The Nobel committee did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment following Rubio\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

Pillay currently serves as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar.<\/p>\n

When countries do not have a representative on the court\u2019s permanent, 15-judge panel, they can appoint an expert of their choice. Gambia, which launched the proceedings in 2019, selected Pillay when the country accused Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority group.<\/p>\n

As a young lawyer in apartheid South Africa, part of Pillay\u2019s work involved establishing key rights for political prisoners being held on Robben Island, which included Mandela, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n

After apartheid ended, Mandela appointed Pillay to be the country\u2019s first nonwhite woman to serve as a High Court judge.<\/p>\n

Venezuelan opposition leader won last year<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last year, Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation.<\/p>\n

Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: The Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s second term, he has been outspoken about his desire for the Nobel, but has expressed doubts that the committee would ever award him the prize. After Pillay won Friday, Trump alleged without evidence that the prize committee was \u201ccrooked,\u201d saying it’s \u201cjust another sign of how Norway and all these others are ripping off our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peace prize follows a week of Nobel announcements<\/strong><\/p>\n

Four of this year’s Nobels were announced earlier this week, in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.<\/p>\n

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.<\/p>\n

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South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, sits at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Oct. 9, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. OSLO, Norway \u2014 Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief whose career has spanned from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_templately_pack_id":"","_templately_imported_at":"","_templately_source":"","_templately_import_session_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-korea","category-trending-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t