Navi Pillay has won the Nobel Peace Prize 2026. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced in Oslo on Friday, 9 October, that this year's prize goes to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, the South African jurist of Indian Tamil origin, "for her efforts to promote peace and international law". Pillay is 85. She has defended anti-apartheid activists, served as a judge on two international tribunals, led the UN's human rights office and now sits on the International Court of Justice.

The committee said Pillay "has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order" and has been instrumental in making sure war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted. Its chair, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, called her "one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time".

Who is Navi Pillay?

Pillay was born in Durban, South Africa, to a family of Indian Tamil origin, and grew up under apartheid. In 1967 she became the first woman to open a law practice in what was then the province of Natal. As a lawyer she defended Nelson Mandela, himself a Nobel peace laureate, along with other activists who opposed apartheid. She later became the first non-white woman to serve as a judge on South Africa's High Court.

That background runs through the committee's citation. It said a "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".

Navi Pillay's career in international law

Few lawyers have held as many top jobs in international justice. Pillay has served:

• as a judge on the High Court of South Africa;

• as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR);

• as a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague;

• as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights;

• as chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a post she held until recently;

• and now as a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where she is hearing the case in which Myanmar is accused of genocide against the Rohingya.

She told reporters on Friday that she wants to see the Myanmar case through to its end.

Why she won: the Rwanda tribunal breakthroughs

The Nobel Committee pointed to two legal firsts from her time on the Rwanda tribunal. When the ICTR ruled that rape and sexual violence can amount to a crime against humanity, and to genocide, the committee said her influence was "a significant factor". In the same case, a defendant faced charges of incitement to commit genocide purely for spreading propaganda, which had never happened before.

The committee said these rulings showed that legal measures can help prevent war and violence. It added that her "independence, expertise and steadfastness have made her one of the most respected international jurists of our time".

A message about international law under pressure

The committee was unusually direct about why it picked a judge this year. It said the system of international law "is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack", with a "shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks". In a world with more wars and conflicts than it has seen in a long time, it said, international law "is no longer just a supplement to peace and security. It is an absolute necessity."

It also noted that judges are now being sanctioned and their courts attacked. Judges, it said, "guard the thin red line between order and chaos". Ashok Swain, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, told Al Jazeera that the prize will not change anything on the ground, but that its message matters in the current climate.

The Gaza report and its reaction

Pillay chaired the UN commission of inquiry that concluded last year that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. She called Israel's actions there "a moral outrage and a legal emergency". Israel dismissed the report as "scandalous". On Friday, Pillay said that judges "interpret the law" and "look at all the facts", so the findings were impartial.

How Navi Pillay reacted to winning

Pillay heard the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum in Germany, a meeting on international law held in the city where Nazi war criminals were tried. Speaking to reporters in a hallway, she said: "Being a judge and a lawyer, I still want to verify." She told Al Jazeera she first thought it must be a joke, and added that she was surprised to be praised for courage over her Gaza report: "Why would you need courage to speak the truth?"

She also joked about US President Donald Trump, who has long said he deserves the prize. "If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump," she said in a video shared by Amnesty International's secretary-general. Last year's laureate, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, gave her Nobel medal to Trump at the White House earlier this year.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa congratulated her, calling the award a "profound tribute to the veteran jurist's courage, integrity and lifelong commitment to justice".

Nobel Peace Prize 2026: key facts

• Laureate: Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, South Africa.

• Citation: "for her efforts to promote peace and international law".

• Announced: 9 October 2026 in Oslo, at 11:00 local time (2:30 PM IST).

• Nominations: 287 candidates. Other names in the frame included the International Space Station, emergency response teams in Sudan, children's advocates in Ukraine and two international courts.

• Prize money: 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).

• Ceremony: 10 December 2026 in Oslo, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.

• Milestone: the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded 125 years ago, in 1901.

What's next in Nobel week

The peace prize is the fifth Nobel of the week, after medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. On Thursday, the literature prize went to Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced on Monday, 12 October. You can read our full Nobel Prize 2026 schedule with IST timings.

Sources: Norwegian Nobel Committee press release (NobelPrize.org, 9 October 2026); Al Jazeera and Reuters; CBC News; NPR.

Cover photo: Navi Pillay at a Wayamo Foundation event / Wayamo Foundation via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.