Navi Pillay wins 2026 Nobel Peace Prize

Former ICC judge Navi Pillay has been announced as the winner of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize“for her efforts to promote peace and international law”.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize underlined the importance of maintaining an organised international order, the committee said in its citation. 

The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also oversaw a UN report that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, was announced as the winner of the award on Friday October 9.

“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” it said.

“We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice. Whenever might overtakes right, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful co-existence.”

Born in Durban, in South Africa’s Natal province, in a family of Indian Tamil origin, Navi Pillay, 85, has been a judge on several international courts, including the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

"A commitment to justice and human dignity": South African judge Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize

She was also chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that concluded last year that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Israel dismissed the report as “scandalous”.

In 1967 she became the first woman to start a law practice in Natal and the first non-white woman to serve on South Africa’s High Court.

Pillay held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict, and demonstrated a firm moral compass in her long career, said the committee.

“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,” said the citation.

The peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won in 2025.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 12 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.2 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.