When South African human rights activist Navi Pillay won this year's Nobel Peace Prize, she was coincidentally attending a conference at the Nuremberg court in Germany, where the historic trial of Nazi leaders nearly 80 years ago laid the foundations of modern international law.
As her colleagues in the human rights community applauded and congratulated the former ICC judge on her win, her first reaction was simply: “Is this real? I thought it was a joke.”
She said jokingly, “If you applaud a little more, I might share this award with (US President Donald) Trump,” referring to last year’s winner dedicating her medal to the American president. Then she added: “It is very appropriate to be in the company of friends and colleagues who all support human rights.”
The functioning of this community and the international legal system has come under increasing attack in recent years, a fact that the Nobel Committee was keen to highlight in its decision to honor Pillay, 85.
By highlighting Pillay, who has held positions in several international courts and oversaw a 2025 UN report that concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, the committee said it wanted to “remind the world that the rule of law, at the national and international levels, forms the foundation of the system we have established to ensure peace.”
Justice is a “necessity” for achieving peace
This message was not explicitly directed at a specific country, but it implicitly criticized countries, especially the United States, whose actions led to the weakening of international legal institutions.
Hours after Pillay's victory, the Trump administration announced new sanctions on the International Criminal Court, the body established in 2002 to prosecute individuals accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The International Criminal Court condemned this step, describing it as “an attack on the rule of law and on the fundamental foundations of the international legal system.” It also called on other countries to help support the court, but stressed that its work will continue.
A number of the court's prosecutors have already been targeted for US sanctions after the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Galant in 2024.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio even pledged in July to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court, accusing it of “waging war against our country, not with bullets or missiles,” but with “the force of so-called international law.”
Without mentioning these efforts, the Nobel Committee warned that international law is an “absolute necessity” for peace, even if the committee faces difficulties in holding the world’s most powerful actors accountable for their actions.
The committee continued: “History has shown that a world that operates in the absence of the rule of law is unjust, unwise, and inhumane. Judges who protect that thin red line between order and chaos deserve our strong praise. But today, these same judges are being sanctioned, and attacks are being launched on their institutions.”
Pillay, who has served as a judge in two major international tribunals and as a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, embodies many of the values that the Commission wanted to emphasize. She also warned that international law, especially the International Criminal Court, and human rights issues are under attack that undermines the principle that justice is a basic condition for achieving lasting peace.
Haakon Gerlo, acting director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute, told CNN, “This choice was brave, and that major political actors are the ones exerting pressure against some of these institutions, and against some legal systems.”
Gerlo added that choosing a specific person, rather than the institutions in which she works, “shows that we, as individuals, can work for peace, each according to our different capabilities.”
Anti-apartheid lawyer
Pillay was born on September 23, 1941, and grew up in a family of Indian Tamil origin in Durban, South Africa, at a time when the country was still under apartheid.
Donations from her local community helped her enroll in courses designed for non-white students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where she first encountered the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials. These records greatly interested her, both in demonstrating the idea of countries coming together in the pursuit of criminal justice, and as a framework for understanding crimes during the apartheid era.
After her graduation, she defended anti-apartheid activists, revealed that political detainees were subjected to torture, and succeeded in filing a lawsuit to stop the torture of her detained husband.
“I succeeded in enabling political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, to obtain legal defense,” Pillay wrote in an opinion article published by CNN in 2021. “The first judge’s office I entered was my own office in 1995, as the first non-white woman to hold a position on the Supreme Court.”
However, she did not complete her term on the South African Supreme Court, as the United Nations General Assembly elected her as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which sought to prosecute those responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Pillay played a pivotal role in establishing two important legal precedents for that court: first, that rape and sexual violence can constitute a crime against humanity and a mass crime.
Secondly, the accused may face “the charge of incitement to commit genocide simply for spreading propaganda,” according to the Nobel Committee.
She served as a judge at the International Criminal Court between 2003 and 2008 before being appointed responsible for the human rights file at the United Nations. She currently serves as a judge at the International Court of Justice in a case in which Myanmar is accused of committing genocide.
The Nobel Committee's decision to award the Peace Prize to Pillay sparked an angry reaction on Friday from Israel, which strongly denied allegations of genocide.
Netanyahu strongly condemned the Nobel Committee, saying it had “lost its moral compass,” and accused Pillay of “lying.”
There has been no reaction yet from Trump, who has not hidden his desire to receive this award.
In an impromptu speech in Nuremberg on Friday, Pillay dedicated her Nobel Prize to “all survivors of international crimes” and to defenders of international criminal justice, “whose compassion and courage continue to ensure that impunity cannot prevail.”
“Perhaps I was destined to be in historic courtroom No. 600, where the Nuremberg trials were held, when the award was announced and I was informed,” she said.
