South African-born Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize for her work in international justice

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief whose career has spanned from defending the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to leading a panel that found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote international law as it comes under attack. Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of the U.N. commission she led on Gaza.

The leaders also have been highly critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; Pillay has worked at both and is serving as an ad hoc judge at the ICC. On Friday, the Trump administration imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal that the U.S. believes has become politicized and attempted to unfairly and illegally prosecute Americans and Israelis on war crimes charges.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions. “We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video address posted to social media. The ICC slammed the sanctions. "This unprecedented step follows a series of designations against thirteen independent Judges and prosecutors who serve the cause of justice," the court said. "It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law."

In announcing Navi's win in Oslo, Norway, as part of the peace prize’s 125th anniversary, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, called Pillay’s work “a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world." The committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict, and Watne Frydnes said Pillay’s award was a message to those seeking to undermine “the international rules-based system and the institutions.”

While her career has been global in scope, criticism often has been fiercely local, notably in places such as Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa as she and peers took on some of the world’s most painful and sensitive legal issues and the most vulnerable populations. Pillay, 85, received the news while attending a forum in Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the trials of Nazi war criminals that helped lay the foundations of international law.

“Firstly, at this venue, your applause means a great deal to me,” she said to a standing ovation. “You know, you don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.” She laters said at a news conference that leaders have a “legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war." Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council.

The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. Gaza was among Pillay’s first comments Friday after hearing she had won. “What’s happening there is genocide,” she said in Germany, to more applause. Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the accusations of genocide. Pillay has repeatedly rebuffed critics who accused her of antisemitism or allegedly turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel.

Under her leadership, the commission also issued reports accusing Hamas of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. In an interview with The Associated Press last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the U.N. rights chief from 2008 to 2014. The Nobel announcement came at another critical time for Gaza, just two days after the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people and sparked the war.

Over 74,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with their territory devastated. Saturday marks a year since a fragile ceasefire took effect, while Israeli strikes continue. A senior Hamas official, Bassem Naim, in a statement Friday called the Nobel for Pillay a message of hope for Palestinians, especially in Gaza, that “humanity still resists the forces of evil targeting international justice.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said in a statement that “if there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender.

She’d be a frontrunner.” The award was announced less than three weeks before Israel’s election, in which Netanyahu is fighting to stay in power. For many Israelis, however, the issue is less about the government’s approach to Gaza and more about how well it would protect them from further attacks. The sanctions block any assets the ICC as an institution might have in U.S. jurisdictions and set a six-month timeline for U.S. companies and individuals that have business with the court to wind that business down.

As a young lawyer in apartheid South Africa, part of Pillay’s work involved establishing key rights for political prisoners being held on Robben Island, which included Mandela, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize. After apartheid ended, then-South African President Mandela appointed Pillay to be the country’s first non-white woman to serve as a High Court judge. In Trump’s second term, he has been outspoken about his desire for the Nobel, but has expressed doubts that the committee would ever award him the prize.

“They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. MS NOW's Julia Jester contributed to this report.