The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to 85-year-old Navi Pillay, a former United Nations human rights chief and veteran international judge from South Africa, honoring her decades-long work advancing global peace and the rule of international law. The committee recognized Pillay for laying the foundation for a more inclusive, comprehensive global legal order, highlighting her instrumental work in ensuring accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Born to a bus driver in a segregated, low-income Indian neighborhood of Durban during South Africa’s apartheid era, Pillay blazed a trail for women and people of color in law: she became the first woman to open a private law practice in Natal Province in 1967, and later the first non-white woman appointed to South Africa’s High Court. Over her 60-year career, Pillay has built a global reputation investigating and prosecuting human rights violations in some of the world’s most volatile conflict zones, including Rwanda, Myanmar, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She served as president of the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which oversaw prosecutions for the 1994 Rwandan genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people, was elected to the International Criminal Court in 2003, and most recently chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2021 to 2025. That three-member commission found that Israel had committed acts of genocide in Gaza and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant incited genocide through their public statements. The commission also found that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes during the October 7, 2023 attacks that killed roughly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, and additionally accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. While the commission had no formal legal authority to enforce its findings, its conclusions drew fierce pushback from Israel, which rejected the findings and accused the panel of acting as proxies for Hamas. That criticism has carried over to Pillay’s Nobel award: on Friday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the award a “grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimise anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.” U.S. President Donald Trump, who has previously stated he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, reposted a social media post claiming the Nobel Committee had “demeaned” the prize by awarding it to an “unabashed hater of America and Israel.” Just days after the award announcement, the U.S. implemented sweeping new sanctions against the International Criminal Court, citing a goal of restricting the court’s resources and ability to operate – a move the ICC called an assault on the rule of law. Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes pushed back on claims the award was a political statement on the Gaza conflict, emphasizing that Pillay received the prize for her entire body of work, not just her findings on Gaza. Pillay first heard the news of her award while at Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice, where she is currently serving as a judge in the International Court of Justice case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, accusing the country of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Myanmar has denied the allegations, calling the genocide claims unsubstantiated. When told she had won, Pillay initially joked, “it must be a joke,” before quipping to the crowd gathered to applaud her, “If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” a reference to last year’s winner, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who gave her medal to Trump in January to recognize his commitment to freedom. Pillay dedicated her award to “all the survivors of international crimes” and to international justice practitioners “whose compassion and courage continue to ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign.” Global leaders and human rights organizations have broadly praised the award. UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the award reaffirms that “human rights, the rule of law and justice, and accountability are fundamental to everything, to peace, to security, and prosperity.” UN Secretary General António Guterres called Pillay “a steadfast, independent voice of justice amidst some of the most historic international legal cases of our time.” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa noted that Pillay, who got her start defending anti-apartheid activists in her home country, has spent her career “upholding human dignity and bring hope in South Africa and to peoples globally.” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard, who was with Pillay when she learned of the award, called it an “inspired choice,” noting that “at a time when both international law and justice are under attack, when too many states attempt to hollow them out, her Nobel Peace Prize could not come at a better time.” With the award, Pillay becomes South Africa’s fifth Nobel Peace Prize winner, following in the footsteps of iconic anti-apartheid leaders Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.