Navi Pillay Wins 2026 Nobel Peace Prize
Former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award today in Oslo. It said Pillay won “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.”
Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the committee had been unable to reach her. He said Pillay has a firm moral compass and has led the way to a more comprehensive legal order.
Pillay, 85, was at a conference at the International Nuremberg Principles Academy in Nuremberg, Germany, when she was pulled out to be told. She returned to the room to applause.
She gave an impromptu speech to colleagues, in which she joked about last year’s winner, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who ended up giving her prize to US President Donald Trump. “If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump.”
Pillay said she was “reeling with surprise” but “deeply honoured and grateful.” She dedicated the prize to “all the survivors of international crime” and to the “practitioners and defenders” of international justice.
She also warned about efforts to weaken international law.
Attempts to weaken international law, she said, “risk returning us to a world in which power rather than law determines whose suffering matters.”
Pillay was born in Durban, South Africa, into apartheid. Because she is a non-white woman, she said no law firm would employ her, so in 1967 she opened her own practice. The BBC reports she was the first woman to do so in Natal Province.
She defended anti-apartheid activists and helped secure rights for political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela.
Her international career includes: judge, then president, of the international tribunal on Rwanda’s genocide, where she helped establish that rape and sexual violence can constitute acts of genocide, service on the International Criminal Court, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
She currently sits as a judge on the International Court of Justice, including in the case in which Myanmar is accused of genocide.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called Pillay “a steadfast, independent voice of justice amidst some of the most historic international legal cases of our time.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa described her as a “pioneering defence attorney for anti-apartheid activists.” The Nelson Mandela Foundation called the win “a significant moment for South Africa.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said she has “devoted her life to… defending the weak against the powerful.”
Volker Türk, the current UN human rights chief, called it a “collective win for human rights.”
Israel criticised the choice. It said the award “legitimises anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.” Pillay chaired the UN commission that found Israel had committed genocidal acts in Gaza, a finding Israel rejected.