Navi Pillay, South African Jurist, Is Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

A South African lawyer with a long record in human rights work, including leading a U.N. commission that said Israel had committed genocide, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a decision that drew Israel’s condemnation and underscored the country’s deep isolation on the world stage. The lawyer, Navanethem Pillay, known as Navi, has worked for decades on human rights issues, defending anti-apartheid activists like the future president and Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela.

Over the years, she has variously served as a top U.N. official and as a judge on the International Criminal Court and a tribunal investigating genocide in Rwanda. But it was Ms. Pillay’s work last year on a U.N. commission on Israel that made the Nobel committee’s announcement on Friday an intensely political decision, as it put the prize in the middle of one of the world’s most divisive issues. That commission said that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding that Israel rejected.

Announcing the award, the Nobel committee did not explicitly mention Gaza, instead citing Ms. Pillay’s long career in human rights and a global shift toward “power politics” that had undermined respect for law and justice. The committee chair, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, called the award “a message to those who are attacking” international law. Ms. Pillay, 85, is “one of the most respected international jurists of our time,” the committee said, calling her “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.”

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