Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize for defending international law

Navi Pillay, the South African judge who helped establish that rape can constitute genocide, has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award on Friday, 9 October, honouring her work for peace and international law.

Pillay grew up under apartheid in Durban, in a family of Indian Tamil descent. As a lawyer, she defended anti-apartheid activists, exposed torture and helped secure rights for prisoners on Robben Island.

Her work later reached the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she served as a judge and then president. The UN credits her with a critical role in its groundbreaking rulings on rape as genocide, bringing sexual violence within the reach of international criminal justice.

She subsequently served as a judge at the International Criminal Court and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. In South Africa, she also helped shape the constitutional equality clause protecting people against discrimination.

The Nobel committee presented its choice as a defence of a legal order under pressure. It warned of attacks on international courts, sanctions against judges and powerful states evading responsibility. Pillay’s career, it said, demonstrated the role of law in protecting people from abuses of power.

DailySweden

DailySweden's desk of editors, reporters, researchers and investigative journalists. We bring readers factual, truthful and objective reporting on the issues that matter to them.

Contact the editorial desk ›