“If you clap a little louder, maybe I’ll share the prize with Trump,” joked Navi Pillay as soon as she learned she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize from Nuremberg, where she was participating in a symposium on international law, as the attendeeswith warm applause.
“But as a lawyer and a judge, I must verify” that it is indeed true, she added with a laugh.
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Navanethem “navi” Pillay Nobel Peace Prize 2026 winner
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Pilay’s reaction was captured on video by Amnesty International Secretary General Anies Kalamar, who uploaded it to X.
“The last thing I did was submit the report on Gaza, in which I characterize what is happening there as genocide,” Pillay noted.
Amazing moment.
Navi Pillay has received the Nobel Peace Prize! https://t.co/HL3r1PJzLO
AdvertisementWe are at the Nuremberg Tribunal; I cannot think of a stronger symbol for her Nobel Prize.
We are all so thrilled!
Here are her first reactions upon hearing the news: https://t.co/Crbj6XdiyQ
Advertisement— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) October 9, 2026
Who is Navi Pillay?
Pillay, 85, served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.
She was also the first non-white justice of the Supreme Court of South Africa and has served as a judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
“This year’s laureate has played a decisive role in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted,” the Nobel Committee noted in a statement, in which it praised Pillay’s exceptional “courage” and “integrity.”
“In an era marked by existential challenges —notably a number of wars and conflicts the world has not seen in a long time—international law is not merely a supplement to peace and security. It is an absolute necessity,” the committee added.
From a young lawyer of Indian descent in South Africa during the apartheid era, Pillay rose to become UN High Commissioner and proved that she knows how to handledifficult cases.
Her career took her from the courts of South Africa, where she defended anti-apartheid activists and secured crucial rights for political prisoners, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the ICC.
Furthermore, she headed the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which, in a report in September 2025, accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Pilai denounces the fact that she has since been labeled an “anti-Semite” and criticizes the online calls for the U.S. to impose sanctions on her, as Washington has already done against the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, ICJ judges, and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations.
Today, Pilay is a judge at the UN International Court of Justice in The Gambia’s case against Myanmar for war crimes.
