The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, a leading jurist and former U.N. human rights chief, for a long career prosecuting war crimes and helping to strengthen international law.
The Norwegian Nobel committee recognized 85-year-old Pillay for her work as a judge on global courts and as a lawyer in her native South Africa. It said the decision was a reminder that accountability “underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace.”
Born into a family of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay was the first South African to earn a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. She spent her early career defending activists fighting apartheid, including fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. She became the first woman of color to serve on the country’s high court in 1995 after the end of the apartheid regime and later served as a judge of the International Criminal Court.
In his Friday announcement, Nobel Committee Chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes issued a pointed defense of such institutions of global legal order at a time of heightened debate about their limits.
“The institutions that uphold international law are under tremendous pressure, sanctions and attack,” Frydnes told reporters. Yet while “international law has never been perfect, and it’s never been able to prevent all conflicts,” he added, “it sets the standards.”
He described Pillay as “one of the most courageous legal experts of our time” and said she was “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”
Last year, Pillay led a U.N. commission that found Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, echoing assessments by a growing group of Israeli and international human rights organizations. Her panel faced criticism from the Israeli government, which rejected the finding.
Pillay also headed an international tribunal investigating the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which delivered a landmark ruling that widespread rape and sexual violence could constitute acts of genocide. She now serves as a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the U.N.’s main judicial body, in a case where Myanmar stands accused of genocide against the Rohingya minority. Myanmar has denied the allegation.
The United States does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, which Pillay served on from 2003 to 2012, accusing it of overreach and casting it as a threat to the U.S. and Israel. Critics of a White House push to dismantle the Hague-based court have seen Pillay’s win as a rebuke of the U.S. pressure campaign, which continued Friday with new sanctions.
The U.S.’s campaign has drawn strong criticism from European officials and rights groups, who describe it as a bid for impunity that undermines investigations into atrocities.
In comments to reporters, Pillay dedicated her award to war crimes survivors and criticized threats to the ICC as “attempts to weaken international criminal justice.”
The court has issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s war in Gaza. The rulings, ignored by their allies, highlighted the challenge of enforcement.
Russia and Israel have also flouted orders from the ICJ, set up after World War II, to halt military attacks.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry denounced Friday’s Nobel news, calling it an attempt “to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.”
Other leaders, including in South Africa and the European Union, along with rights groups and U.N. officials, welcomed the choice as an endorsement of the rule of law.
On Friday, Pillay heard about her award while at an international law forum in Nuremberg, Germany, where the trials of Nazi war crimes helped establish the foundations of international law.
“At this venue, your applause means a great deal,” she said.
“But being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information,” Pillay quipped to laughter.
The Nobel Peace Prize, as established by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel in his will, is meant to recognize those who “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind in the field of peace.”
Winners have included those directly involved in negotiations to end conflicts, as well as efforts to promote human rights, democracy, arms control or climate action. The Red Cross has won three times and the U.N. refugee agency twice.
Throughout its history, the prize has at times triggered backlash, such as in 1973, when former secretary of state Henry Kissinger was recognized despite U.S. bombardment of Cambodia and Laos. Two committee members quit in protest. After Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was honored in 2019 for efforts to resolve a long conflict with Eritrea, the committee faced calls to revoke the prize as his country descended into civil war the following year.
Perhaps the most prominent of the Nobel awards, the peace prize comes in the form of a gold medal and 12 million Swedish kroner (about $1.2 million). It will be given at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
A five-person Norwegian Nobel Committee, appointed by the country’s parliament, makes the decision. The committee received more than 280 nominations this year on the award’s 125th anniversary.
In recent years, the committee has announced its choice against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s campaign for the prize, an ambition that has at times influenced the president’s diplomacy. Ahead of Friday’s announcement, the president, who is waging war against Iran, repeated claims that he has “settled eight wars, and big ones.”
Last year’s honor went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, while the 2024 prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese group of survivors from the U.S. atomic bombings advocating against nuclear weapons.
Machado later handed her 2025 award to Trump at the White House in a bid to regain his favor after the U.S. toppled Venezuela’s longtime leader Nicolás Maduro, just months after the Nobel announcement. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, however, has said that a prize cannot be transferred to another person.
Trump this week expressed skepticism that the Nobel Committee would recognize him but told reporters that when Machado gave him the prize, she said that “there’s never been anybody in the history of the Nobel Prize that deserves it more.”
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