Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for ‘her efforts to promote peace and international law’. (Photo: EPA / Salvatore di Nolfi)Navi Pillay, a former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge who oversaw a United Nations (UN) report that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, 9 October 2026, “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize underlined the importance of maintaining an organised international order, the committee said in its citation.
“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” it said.
“We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice. Whenever might overtakes right, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful coexistence.”
/file/attachments/orphans/Resurfacing5_626989.jpg "UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, smiles prior to the opening of the 20th session of the Human Rights Council at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, 18 June 2012 (reissued 09 October 2026). South African jurist Navi Pillay, a human rights defender and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for 'her efforts to promote peace and international law'. (Photo: EPA/SALVATORE DI NOLFI)")
Born in Durban to a family of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay, 85, has been a judge on several international courts, including the ICC and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
She was also chairperson of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that concluded last year that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Israel dismissed the report as “scandalous”.
She has also served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In 1967 she became the first woman to start a law practice in Natal and the first woman of colour to serve on South Africa’s high court.
Pillay held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict, and demonstrated a firm moral compass in her long career, said the committee.
“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,” said the citation.
The Hague-based ICC has been the target of an escalating campaign by US President Donald Trump, who last month urged countries to leave it.
Washington has already imposed targeted sanctions on several prosecutors and judges at the court and, according to sources, is considering wider sanctions in retaliation for the targeting of Israeli leaders.
/file/attachments/orphans/Pillay_Nobel-peace_971058.jpg "The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, with a picture of Navanethem \"Navi\" Pillay who will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 at the Nobel Institute, Oslo 09 October 2026. (Photo: Javad Parsa /NTB via AFP)")
The committee was not directly criticising Trump by rewarding Pillay, according to Haakon Gjerloew, acting director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
“I think it’s generally rather a promotion of an international legal world order. Of course, he might react to someone who has been part of the ICC, but it’s not a direct attack on Trump,” Gjerloew said.
The peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won in 2025.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 12 million Swedish crowns, or just under R20 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will. DM
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