statement<\/a> on Friday, calling her \u201cone of the great defenders of international legal principles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nPillay is currently serving as a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, she chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which investigated Israel\u2019s retaliatory war in Gaza and concluded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s administration had committed genocide against Palestinians, a finding that the Israeli government firmly denounced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In what appeared to be a swipe at Netanyahu, and some other leaders around the world, including US President Donald Trump, J\u00f8rgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the committee, spoke of \u201ca shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told reporters in Oslo that the prize served as \u201ca message that international law and its institutions are the cornerstone of a more peaceful world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Born into an Indian Tamil family in Durban, South Africa, Pillay founded her own law firm in 1967 and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has served as a judge in South Africa, at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her work helped influence the definition of acts that can constitute genocide and crimes against humanity, including rape and sexual violence, and because of it, a defendant in Rwanda faced charges of incitement to commit genocide purely on the basis of spreading propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA common thread runs from her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time,\u201d the committee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arguably the most prestigious prize in global diplomacy, the Nobel Peace Prize can also stir controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, Trump campaigned aggressively, and ultimately unsuccessfully, to obtain the award, which he has long coveted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this year, the 2025 laureate, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, gifted her medal to the US president, stunning Norway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pillay, who will receive 12 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million) in prize money, wasn\u2019t among the favourites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahead of the award, there were wild swings in betting on the Polymarket platform, with Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, emerging as the frontrunner overnight, trailed closely by Mykola Kuleba, a Ukrainian children\u2019s rights activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time of Friday\u2019s announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it had not succeeded in reaching Pillay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering to discuss international law in Nuremberg, Germany, where she got a standing ovation, according to the Associated Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYour applause means a great deal to me,\u201d she was quoted as telling those in attendance. \u201cYou know, you don\u2019t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She added, \u201cBut being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African judge and human rights lawyer Navi Pillay has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":879162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: Instagram returned HTTP 400: Media ID is not available","_sma_x_post_id":"2108515582618349848","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2231422664344799","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26764,26763],"class_list":["post-879161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-navi-pillay","tag-nobel-peace-prize"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879161"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":879166,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879161\/revisions\/879166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}