Navi Pillay Wins 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for Human Rights Work
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A South African legal expert has received one of the world’s biggest honours for her work on human rights and justice.
Former UN human rights chief and International Court of Justice judge Navi Pillay has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised her for promoting peace and international law.
Pillay is 85 and from South Africa.
Her work has included cases on human rights abuses in Rwanda, Myanmar and Gaza.
She started out defending anti-apartheid activists in South Africa.
She is the country's fifth Peace Prize winner, after Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, among others.
The committee chair, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, said her work helped make sure war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
He said international law is now a necessity, not just a support for peace.
The committee could not tell Pillay in advance.
When she heard the news, she said "it must be a joke."
She also joked that she might share the prize with US President Donald Trump.
Pillay grew up in Durban during apartheid.
She became the first woman to open a law practice in Natal Province in 1967, and later the first non-white woman appointed to South Africa's high court.
She served on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, including four years as its president.
From 2021 to 2025 she chaired a UN inquiry into the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
That commission concluded Israel had committed genocidal acts in Gaza.
Israel rejected the findings. Its Foreign Ministry called the award a "grotesque weaponisation" of the prize.
Pillay is now a judge at the International Court of Justice in a case where The Gambia accuses Myanmar of genocide against the Rohingya. Myanmar denies the charge.
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