Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the South African lawyer who defended anti-apartheid activists and went on to lead an international war crimes tribunal and the United Nations’ human rights office, has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award in Oslo on Friday, Oct. 9, citing her “efforts to promote peace and international law,” Reuters reported. The committee linked her early work defending Nelson Mandela and other opponents of apartheid to her later years as a judge in major international cases.
Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes called her a person “who with exceptional courage and integrity has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order,” and said she had been instrumental in making sure war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
There was one small hitch: the committee had not been able to reach Pillay, 85, before the announcement. Frydnes asked that if she was watching and saw a call from a Norwegian number, she “please pick up,” according to CBS News and the AP.
From Durban to the World’s Courts
Pillay was born in Durban in 1941 into a family of Indian Tamil descent. In 1967 she opened her own law practice, the first non-white woman to do so in what was then Natal Province. Over 28 years as a lawyer she defended activists and helped expose the torture and treatment of detainees. In 1973 she won the right for political prisoners on Robben Island, including Mandela, to see lawyers.
Her career after apartheid moved quickly:
- 1995: Appointed to South Africa’s High Court under President Mandela, the first non-white woman on the court.
- 1995–2003: Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and its president from 1999. Her best-known case, Akayesu, established that rape and sexual assault could constitute genocide.
- 2003–2008: Judge at the International Criminal Court, including on its Appeals Chamber.
- 2008–2014: UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a job she described as being “the voice of the victim everywhere.”
More recently she has served as a judge ad hoc at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by the Gambia against Myanmar, and chaired the UN’s commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory until November 2025.
The Prize
This year’s award marks the prize’s 125th anniversary. The committee considered 287 nominations, just over a quarter of them for organizations. The award is worth 12 million Swedish kronor, about $1.2 million, after the Nobel Foundation raised every prize by 1 million kronor this year. It will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
The Peace Prize is the fifth Nobel announced this week, following medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. Last year’s prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.
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