The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law. The Prize’s press statement described Pillay as a person with exceptional courage and integrity, who has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order.
“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said. “We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.”
“Navi Pillay is one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time. Her distinguished career reminds us of the need to support, fortify and expand the global rule of law,” he added.
Pillay became South Africa’s first non-white woman high court judge in 1995, following the end of apartheid. She also served as a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court. She was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014 and later chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Today, Pillay is a judge on the International Court of Justice in the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide.
Born into an Indian Tamil family in Durban, South Africa, Pillay had her first encounter with the law when she was five years old and testified in court after being robbed of 5 pounds. Her mother had given her the money to give to her father, as these were his wages for the month. While the subject was convicted, the court did not return the money to her father.
Pillay founded her own law firm in 1967. In 1973, she won the right for political prisoners on Robben Island, including Nelson Mandela, to have access to lawyers in State v. Kader Hassimand 9 others and State v. Harry Gwalaand 9 others.
In 1981, under a scholarship programme for South African students created by anti-apartheid activists at Harvard University, Pillay earned her Master of Law. In 1988, she also graduated with a Doctorate of Jurisprudence.
She co-founded the Advice Desk for the Abused in 1986 and also ran a shelter for victims of domestic violence. As a member of the Women’s National Coalition, she contributed to an equality clause prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, and sexual orientation in South Africa’s constitution. In 1992, she co-founded the international women’s rights group Equality Now.
Throughout her career, Pillay has stressed the duty of individuals and states to uphold the rule of law. Her influence was significant in a landmark ruling by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which recognised that rape and sexual violence could constitute both crimes against humanity and acts of genocide. In the same case, she helped secure another legal first: a defendant faced charges “of incitement to commit genocide on the basis of spreading propaganda”.
Pillay reacted to her win by making a quip about US President Donald Trump’s well-documented desire to win the prize himself: “If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” the 85-year-old said during a standing ovation captured by Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard in Nuremberg and posted on X.
“Her [Pillay’s] commitment to justice and human dignity is ae peaceful world,” Watne Frydnes said
The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded 125 years ago. Already then, the Norwegian Nobel Committee underscored the importance of resolving conflicts through international law—a theme that has remained prominent throughout the history of the peace prize. The reach of international law expanded after the Second World War, in particular with the creation of the UN institutions. The key insight was that lasting peace must be built on legal principles, not on the will of the strong or a fragile balance of power. Additional legal mechanisms were introduced in the post-war decades, and momentum picked up further after the end of the Cold War.
The laureates are announced every year in Stockholm, Sweden, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is announced in Oslo, Norway.
