The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday 9 October that Navi Pillay has won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work as a judge and human rights lawyer, according to a Bloomberg report published by BusinessTech. The committee said international law faces “tremendous pressure” and its institutions are “under attack”.
Pillay, 85, is currently serving as a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide. The committee said she has “held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict”, calling her “one of the great defenders of international legal principles”. “A common thread runs from her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time,” it said.
Her career
Born into an Indian Tamil family in Durban, Pillay founded her own law firm in 1967 and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1988. She has served as a judge in South Africa and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. Her work helped influence the definition of acts that can constitute genocide and crimes against humanity, including rape and sexual violence.
Last year she chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which concluded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration had committed genocide against Palestinians, a finding the Israeli government firmly denounced. Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes spoke of “a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice”, which Bloomberg described as appearing to be a swipe at Netanyahu and other leaders, including US President Donald Trump. He told reporters in Oslo that the prize was “a message that international law and its institutions are the cornerstone of a more peaceful world”.
The prize
Pillay will receive 12 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) in prize money. She was not among the favourites: ahead of the announcement, betting on the Polymarket platform swung wildly, with Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, emerging as the frontrunner overnight, followed closely by Mykola Kuleba, a Ukrainian children’s rights activist.
The committee said it had not managed to reach Pillay at the time of the announcement. She received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering on international law in Nuremberg, Germany, where she got a standing ovation, according to the Associated Press. “Your applause means a great deal to me,” she was quoted as telling those present. “You know, you don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.” She added: “But being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.”
The prize can also stir controversy. Last year Trump campaigned aggressively, and unsuccessfully, to win it, and earlier this year the 2025 laureate, María Corina Machado, gifted her medal to the US president, stunning Norway.
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