Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, an experienced jurist who chaired a United Nations commission that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “her efforts to promote peace and international law.”
In awarding this year’s Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee argued strong international judicial institutions must be able to enforce the rule of law to have any hope of mediating the growing number of wars and conflicts worldwide.
The committee also noted that political attacks against judges and international law itself are becoming more commonplace.
Pillay has had a long, storied career — both as a lawyer and as a judge — and more recently, she has definitively weighed in on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
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She chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which was created in 2021 after a flare-up in tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
In September 2025, nearly two years after the Oct. 7 attacks, the commission concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, while also specifically accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of inciting genocide.
“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention,” Pillay said after the commission’s report was released.
At the time, Israel dismissed the findings as “distorted and false.”
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Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of the Israel-based Shurat HaDin Law Center, cast doubt on the Nobel Committee’s decision to award Pillay the peace prize.
“A peace prize should honor those who build peace, not those accused of turning Israel into a defendant in a campaign of political delegitimization,” said Darshan-Leitner, whose organization has led protest campaigns in Geneva against Pillay. “What peace, exactly, has she brought? The Middle East remains engulfed in conflict, and the region is nowhere near the peace this prize supposedly celebrates.”
Pillay, 85, was born in South Africa’s Natal province to a Tamil Indian family. Her first foray into the legal profession began in 1967, when she founded her own law firm, becoming the first non-white person to do so in her province.
During her 28 years as a defense attorney in South Africa, she represented anti-apartheid activists. In 1973, she won a case securing political prisoners on Robben Island, including Nelson Mandela, the right to consult with lawyers.
Two decades later, Mandela became president and in 1995, he nominated her to the High Court of South Africa, becoming the first non-white woman to serve there.
Her tenure was short-lived because that same year, the United Nations elected her to serve on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a body established to adjudicate those responsible for the Rwandan genocide.
She was integral in the case against Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba, who was found guilty of inciting fellow Hutus to murder, rape and torture thousands of Tutsis.
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That ruling set a precedent that rape constituted a crime against humanity and could amount to genocide when committed with the intent to destroy a targeted group.
“Rape had always been regarded as one of the spoils of war,” Pillay said after the verdict. “Now it is a war crime, no longer a trophy.”
In 2003, she was chosen to be a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC), an institution frequently attacked by President Donald Trump as illegitimate.
After five years on the ICC, Pillay became the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2008. While in that position, she condemned both Israel and Hamas for their conduct in the 2014 Gaza War, saying both sides likely violated international law.
She also condemned the United States for providing funding to Israel’s Iron Dome program when “no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.”
Pillay currently serves as an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice, where she is hearing a case accusing Burma of committing genocide against the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority in the Southeast Asian country.
