Oslo, Oct 9 (PTI) When Navi Pillay learnt on Friday that she had won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, she was in Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg, Germany, where Nazi leaders were tried after World War II.
The coincidence brought her career full circle. As a student at the University of Natal in apartheid-era South Africa, Pillay came across transcripts of the Nuremberg trials. They captivated her with the idea that individuals could be held accountable for grave crimes through an international system of justice.
“Perhaps it was meant to be that I was in this historic courtroom, 600, where the Nuremberg trials were held, when the announcement was made and I was informed of the award,” Pillay, a South African jurist of Indian origin, said after Friday’s announcement.
The 85-year-old jurist dedicated the prize to survivors of international crimes and those working to advance international justice, saying their “compassion and courage continue to ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign”.
“We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack,” she said, pointing to attacks on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and warning that efforts to weaken international criminal justice risked undoing progress made since the Nuremberg trials.
“They risk returning us to a world in which power rather than law determines whose suffering matters,” she said.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the 2026 prize recognised Pillay’s efforts to promote peace and international law.
One of her most recent roles was chairing the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
In September 2025, the commission concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed and were continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The commission also concluded that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had incited genocide. Israel rejected the commission’s findings.
The conclusions, to be sure, were those of an investigative body, not a final ruling by an international court.
Born in Durban on September 23, 1941, to a family of Indian origin with Tamil roots, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay grew up under apartheid.
Her family was poor, and her father worked as a bus driver and took on other jobs to support the household. Her mother raised the children, while both parents stressed the importance of education for their sons and daughters. “We grew up very poor,” Pillay recalled in a UN interview.
She graduated from the University of Natal with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1963 and a law degree in 1965. She later pursued postgraduate studies at Harvard Law School, earning a doctorate in juridical science in 1988.
In 1967, she became the first woman of colour to establish a law practice in Natal Province, according to the Institute for African Women in Law. She represented opponents of apartheid and political detainees, drawing attention to torture and solitary confinement.
In 1973, she helped secure political prisoners’ right to legal counsel. Her experiences also exposed the racial barriers within South Africa’s legal system. A Harvard Law School profile noted that, as a lawyer, she had not been allowed to enter a judge’s chambers.
In 1995, a year after South Africa’s first democratic elections, Pillay became the first woman of colour to serve as an acting judge on the country’s high court.
That same year, she was elected to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established to prosecute those responsible for genocide and other serious crimes committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
She served as a judge until 2003 and was the tribunal’s president from 1999 to 2003.
Pillay was one of three judges in the tribunal’s landmark case against Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of Taba commune, who was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and direct and public incitement to commit genocide.
The 1998 judgment recognised that rape and sexual violence could constitute acts of genocide when committed with the requisite intent. It also recognised rape as a crime against humanity in the circumstances established by the case.
Speaking after the Nobel announcement on Friday, Pillay said she was proud that the tribunal had recognised sexual violence as an international crime.
She described it as “outrageous” that the abuse of women and children during conflicts had been treated as “collateral damage or as reward for the hard fighting soldiers”.
Pillay subsequently served as a judge at the International Criminal Court from 2003 to 2008 and as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.
She is currently serving as a judge in the International Court of Justice case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, having been selected by The Gambia to sit in proceedings concerning alleged violations of the Genocide Convention.
In her Nobel remarks, Pillay said the award strengthened her resolve to defend the rule of law, independent courts and an international legal order based on principle rather than selectivity.
Her message to political leaders was direct: they had a legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war. “That is an obligation I call upon every state to fulfill,” she said.
Announcing the Nobel award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Pillay’s commitment to universal legal principles and her efforts to hold states and national leaders accountable.
“Peace requires justice,” the committee said, adding that the rule of law was essential to resolving conflicts without violence, particularly at a time when international legal institutions face political pressure. PTI AMS ABD ABD
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