Oslo: South African Navanethem Pillay receives Nobel Peace Prize

The South African woman with Indian roots will be honored for her courageous commitment to international law and her work against war crimes and genocide, said committee chairman Jorgen Watne Frydnes.

The 85-year-old Pillay was appointed to the Supreme Court in South Africa in 1995, which no longer exists in this form. Five years later she became a judge and chair of the International Tribunal for Rwanda. From 2008 to 2014 she was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Last year the prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. However, she dedicated her award to US President Donald Trump and gave him her medal. According to Nobel rules, Machado cannot officially pass on the prize. Trump had repeatedly brought himself into play for the prize.

This year's Nobel Peace Prize is worth twelve million Swedish crowns, one million crowns more than last year. This corresponds to just over one million euros. Nobel Prize winners have already been announced since Monday in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. Among the three medicine prize winners are two German researchers, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel. This year the prestigious award for literature went to the Canadian Anne Carson.

The Swedish Riksbank Prize for Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel follows on Monday. Officially, the award is not a Nobel Prize because it does not go back to the will of the Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833–1896). However, it is traditionally awarded after the Nobel Prizes.