OSLO, Norway (AP) — The South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, who is currently an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote peace and international law.
Pillay’s work “is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing
her win in Oslo, Norway.
Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of a U.N. commission she led that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Both leaders also have been highly critical of the institutions where Pillay has worked.
While her work has been global in scope, criticism often has been fiercely local, notably in places like Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa as she and peers took on some of the world’s most painful and sensitive legal issues and most vulnerable populations.
Pillay, 85, received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering to discuss international law in Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the trials of Nazi war criminals that helped lay the foundations of international law.
“Firstly, at this venue, your applause means a great deal to me,” she said to a standing ovation. “You know, you don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.”
And joking, she added: "But being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.”
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.
The commission also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense 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 charges.
Pillay has repeatedly rejected accusations from critics who accused her of antisemitism or allegedly turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel.
In an interview with the AP 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.
Pillay’s win brings renewed attention to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court. The Trump administration already has sanctioned 13 of the ICC’s staff members, among them key prosecutors and nine judges including the court’s Japanese President Tomoko Akane.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has launched what he called a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court.”
In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump called the court an “out of control institution” and an “anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction” over the U.S. as he urged member states to quit the “rogue institution immediately.”
There are fears the court as a whole could be sanctioned, a move that could seriously hamper its ability to mete out justice.
The Norwegian committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict.
Watne Frydnes said the award was a message to those seeking to undermine "the international rules based system and the institutions.”
“At a time when the number of wars and conflicts is rising, and when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack, the Nobel Committee wishes to issue a reminder that the ability to resolve conflicts without force or violence is dependent on the international rule of law,” the committee wrote in a news release.
“An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world.”
Pillay is currently serving 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.
When countries do not have a national on the court’s 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.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo received nominations for 287 candidates for this year’s prize, with just over a quarter of them organizations. Experts say the committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals.
Last year, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: the Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.
Nominations can be made by a select group of people and organizations, including heads of state or politicians serving at a national level, university professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past Nobel Prize recipients and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee itself.
Four of this year's Nobels were announced earlier this week. The Nobel for medicine went to three scientists whose work led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works. The physics award recognized a scientist’s efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos. The chemistry prize recognized two scientists for untangling mysterious mirror images in molecules, a discovery that has been used to develop countless drugs.
Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson won the literature prize Thursday for “bold and inventive” works that fuse the classical and the modern and blur the boundaries of poetry and prose.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.
The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.
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Dazio reported from Berlin and Lewis reported from Stavanger, Norway.
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AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes
