Erik Esbjörnsson: The award a mark in support of international justice

Neither of the two courts ICC or ICJ was awarded this year's peace prize by the Nobel Committee in Oslo. But this year's award is still a strong mark for the defense of international justice. Navi Pillay is one of the world's most respected lawyers and has played a key role in strengthening the rules-based world order that is now under severe pressure. She is awarded the prize "for her efforts to promote peace and international law".

In the 1990s, she became the first to judge someone for the crime of genocide, as a judge at the UN Rwanda Tribunal. After that, she was the UN Human Rights Commissioner for six years. And as recently as last year, her appointment as chairman of the UN panel that singled out Israel as responsible for genocide ended.

When I interviewed her last winter, in connection with the fact that she, along with fellow countryman John Dugard, was named this year's Palme Laureate, she spoke about the importance of not seeing the situation as bleak, despite the fact that political support for international justice has decreased significantly in recent years.

- International institutions, it is important to emphasize, were not created by governments because they suddenly softened or felt they had a responsibility to defend human rights. These changes came at a steady pace over 80 years through pressure from civil society, she said at the time.

Pillay knows what she's talking about. She devoted most of her early career as a defense lawyer to the long and arduous struggle against apartheid, which culminated in the democratization of the 1990s.

As newly elected president, Nelson Mandela nominated her to the country's highest court in 1994, but the following year she received her position at the UN tribunal that would judge those most responsible for the genocide in Rwanda.

Pillay becomes the fifth peace laureate linked to the struggle against apartheid (however, one of these laureates, F.W. de Klerk, was a representative of the previous regime). The fact that it will be a South African will surely sting for US President Donald Trump, who last year seemed to be campaigning to receive the award himself. Trump has in the past year launched harsh attacks on South Africa because of how the country is working to correct historical injustices that persist long after the abolition of the apartheid system.

Last winter, Pillay sharply criticized the US's actions in Venezuela during the interview with DN.

- It is one of the most serious crimes (against international law) that I have seen. Because we live in a modern world that has all these mechanisms in place to stop the kind of gun boat diplomacy that we are now seeing in Latin America.

Navi Pillay is currently in Nuremberg, where at lunchtime on Friday she received applause at a meeting she attended.

- Is it true? It's not April? I said it must be a joke. Your applause means a lot, because you don't want to accept an award if it doesn't have the support of the public.