--- title: "Navi Pillay Wins the Nobel Peace Prize in the Nuremberg Courthouse, and Asks If It Is True" description: "The 85-year-old South African judge was honoured for defending international law, which Washington sanctions and Israel denounces" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-09T09:12:00Z modified: 2026-10-09T12:24:53Z url: https://rews.cc/a/navi-pillay-the-lawyer-no-firm-would-hire-wins-the-125th-nob-0e5b40 language: en tags: ["nobel", "law", "un", "justice", "peace", "world"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Navi Pillay Wins the Nobel Peace Prize in the Nuremberg Courthouse, and Asks If It Is True *The 85-year-old South African judge was honoured for defending international law, which Washington sanctions and Israel denounces* By Jan Sokol · October 9, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/navi-pillay-the-lawyer-no-firm-would-hire-wins-the-125th-nob-0e5b40 ## In brief - South African jurist Navi Pillay, 85, won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for promoting peace and international law - She learned of the award at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice and joked about sharing the prize with Trump - The committee called the prize a message to those undermining international legal institutions - Pillay led ICTR, served on the ICC, was UN rights chief 2008–2014 and is an ad hoc ICJ judge in Gambia v. Myanmar - Israel condemned the award over her Gaza genocide inquiry; the committee says it takes no position on genocide On Friday morning the Norwegian Nobel Committee could not find its laureate. In Oslo, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the committee’s chair, announced that the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize had gone to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, 85, and admitted from the podium that nobody had managed to tell her. If she happened to be watching and saw a Norwegian number calling, he said, she should “please pick up.” She was in Nuremberg, at the Palace of Justice, attending an event in the building where the Nuremberg Trials were held 80 years ago. In a video posted on X by Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, colleagues applaud and Pillay’s first question is short: “Is it true?” She had thought, [CNN reported](https://cnn.com/2026/10/09/world/live-news/nobel-peace-prize-2026-winner-intl), that “it must be a joke.” A colleague told her it was everywhere, on the BBC. The judge was not yet persuaded. As a “lawyer and a judge,” she told the room, [according to CBS News](https://cbsnews.com/news/nobel-peace-prize-2026-navanethem-navi-pillay-south-africa/), “I still want to verify this thing.” Then, to the clapping: “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.” The room laughed. ## A reminder from Oslo The committee did not hide what it meant by the choice. “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,” it wrote, [as the Associated Press reported in the Boston Globe](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/10/09/world/nobel-peace-prize/). Frydnes was blunter: “This is definitely a message to those who are undermining the international system and institutions.” He spoke of “a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.” A reflection, not a fact: a committee in Oslo commands no divisions. What it has is a medal, a sum of 12 million Swedish kronor, about $1.2 million, and a date, December 10, when the prize is presented. In a season of power politics, the only weapon it owns is the reminder. ## No firm would take her Pillay was born in Durban, under apartheid, into a family of Indian Tamil origin, [CNBC noted](https://cnbc.com/2026/10/09/nobel-peace-prize-navanethem-navi-pillay-winner.html). Racism, sexism and class closed the doors of South Africa’s legal profession to her. “I had no choice but to start my own law practice, because no law firm would take me on,” she recalled at Harvard Law School in 2022, where she had earned a master’s in 1982 and a doctorate of juridical science in 1986. “You’re going to get the criticism. You have to face it.” The committee drew a line from those years to these. “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, [CBC News reported](https://cbc.ca/news/world/nobel-peace-prize-2026-9.7374166). Frydnes called her “one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time.” Five years ago, in a CNN op-ed, she wrote that as a law student in 1963 she pored over the Nuremberg cases in the library, and that they “gave me a framework for understanding apartheid-era crimes.” On Friday the library had become the building itself. ## Rwanda, The Hague, Geneva After the High Court of South Africa came the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she sat from 1995 to 2003 and eventually became president. In 1994 Hutu extremists killed an estimated 800,000 people, Tutsis and moderate Hutus, in about a hundred days; some estimates run to about 1 million. The tribunal indicted 93 people, sentenced 62 and referred 10 to national courts. “We must continue to reflect on our collective failure to stop them,” Pillay once said of the killings. She was a judge of the International Criminal Court from 2003 until 2008, when she resigned to become UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a post she held until 2014. Today she sits as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in Gambia v. Myanmar, the case opened seven years ago over whether Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to Bangladesh and elsewhere, amounts to genocide. ## Gaza She also chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which concluded in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, finding “an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.” The report accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among other senior officials, of incitement to genocide. Pillay called Israel’s conduct “a moral outrage and a legal emergency.” Israel called the report “scandalous.” On Friday Israel went further. Honouring Pillay legitimised “anti-Israel hatred,” it said, and Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels must be “applauding from hell,” [France 24 reported](https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20261009-south-africa-s-navanethem-navi-pillay-wins-2026-nobel-peace-prize). The committee said it took no position on genocide. “It’s her report, the Commission’s report, and of course we have great faith in her professionalism, in her integrity,” Frydnes told AFP, adding that international courts must decide. ## The man who wanted it In Washington sits a president who has asked for this prize in public. This week Donald Trump said it “would be a great discredit” to the committee not to choose him; on Wednesday he claimed to have settled eight wars. Earlier this year he linked his push to take Greenland to being passed over. Last year’s laureate, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, handed him her medal after the United States ousted Nicolás Maduro. The committee has said the honour cannot be transferred. His administration sanctioned the ICC, Pillay’s former court, after it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024, accusing it of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.” The court said the sanctions were meant to “harm” its “independent and impartial judicial work.” So the prize for peace went to a judge of the institutions the most powerful government on earth is trying to bend. ## The question of courage The reactions came from the institutions under siege. Volker Türk, her successor as High Commissioner, called it a “collective win for human rights.” ICC President Tomoko Akane spoke of international justice as “a cornerstone of lasting peace.” Callamard wrote that with law and justice under attack, “her Nobel Peace Prize could not come at a better time.” It is the prize’s 125th year, chosen from 287 candidates, the fifth Nobel of a week that also honoured [light-controlled neurons](https://rews.cc/a/the-nobel-prize-for-pointing-blue-light-at-algae-and-then-at-43ac0f) and [cosmic neutrinos](https://rews.cc/a/nobel-physics-prize-goes-to-the-man-who-turned-antarctic-ice-b270f9). The committee had praised her courage. In Nuremberg she seemed puzzled by the word. “Why would you need courage to speak the truth? You interpret the law, you look at all the facts, so it’s an impartial decision you make.” ## Sources - [Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay, International Court of Justice judge, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/10/09/world/nobel-peace-prize/) — bostonglobe.com - [Nobel Peace Prize 2026 awarded to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, former International Criminal Court judge](https://cbsnews.com/news/nobel-peace-prize-2026-navanethem-navi-pillay-south-africa/) — cbsnews.com - [Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Navi Pillay of International Court of Justice](https://cbc.ca/news/world/nobel-peace-prize-2026-9.7374166) — cbc.ca - [South Africa lawyer 'Navi' Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to prosecute war crimes, genocide](https://cnbc.com/2026/10/09/nobel-peace-prize-navanethem-navi-pillay-winner.html) — cnbc.com - [Nobel Peace Prize goes to South African human rights pioneer Navi Pillay](https://cnn.com/2026/10/09/world/live-news/nobel-peace-prize-2026-winner-intl) — cnn.com