New Delhi: South Africa’s judge and human rights activist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to ensure the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
In the Oslo announcement on Friday, it was 125 times since this prize has been awarded. Pillay, 85, is being celebrated for having occupied the institutions that seek to bring the perpetrators of the most grievous crimes to justice.
This statement to the world, the committee said, there are more wars and conflicts in this world than it has seen in a long time, and there is no peace and security without international law. Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the committee said the system is getting a lot of pressure, and that its institutions are under attack. The judges stand as sentinels of the thin line between order and chaos, he said.
Pillay is an Indian Tamil South African. Early in her career, she defended anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, also a Peace Prize Laureate. She later entered the field of international law. She was a member of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda that investigated the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and subsequently of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. She has also been a year-and-a-half as one of the most high-profile and politically sensitive positions with the UN, serving as the organisation’s high commissioner for human rights.
Pillay is still on the bench. Presently, she is sitting on the International Court of Justice in the case against Myanmar over allegations of genocide, which has kept her in the thick of action in the rarest of law trials heard anywhere in the world.
This year there were 287 candidates nominated. The rest of the runners included a leading international court, open advocates for children in Ukraine, emergency responders in Sudan and the International Space Station. The committee’s selection of a judge and not a movement or an organisation has been chosen because it takes into account concerns about the state of the legal order that Pillay has devoted her life to building and protecting.
The ruling comes at a timely moment as well in a politically charged environment. United States President Donald Trump has always wanted the prize and several times expressed himself as being deserving of it even as his country is engaged in a conflict with Iran.
The international Peace Prize, which is probably the most widely known of the Nobel awards, is awarded annually on 10 December in Oslo, the day of Alfred Nobel’s death.
