{"id":229392,"date":"2026-11-01T04:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-nobel-peace-prize-was-awarded-friday-to-the-south-african-jurist-navanethem-navi-pillay-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T04:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:25:10","slug":"the-nobel-peace-prize-was-awarded-friday-to-the-south-african-jurist-navanethem-navi-pillay-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-nobel-peace-prize-was-awarded-friday-to-the-south-african-jurist-navanethem-navi-pillay-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the South African jurist Navanethem \u201cNavi\u201d Pillay. – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the South African legal pioneer Navanethem \u201cNavi\u201d Pillay<\/a> <\/strong>for defending international law and institutions in a world in which increasingly \u201cmight overtakes right.\u201d
Pillay, 85, has a decadeslong career that spans defending Nelson Mandela<\/a> and standing up against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, to leading a United Nations commission that concluded Israel committed genocide<\/a> against Palestinians in Gaza.
\u201cNavi Pillay is one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time,\u201d said J\u00f8rgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Navi Pillay
Frydnes contrasted Pillay\u2019s work with the wider international \u201cshift towards power politics,\u201d<\/a> in which \u201cinternational law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack.\u201d
Her \u201cdistinguished career reminds us of the need to support, fortify and expand the global rule of law,\u201d he said. \u201cNavi Pillay\u2019s commitment to justice and human dignity is a source of hope and inspiration to all who seek to bring about a more peaceful world.\u201d
Pillay learned of her prize at the Nuremberg Forum, an international law gathering in Germany. She told an applauding crowd, \u201cIf you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,\u201d prompting laughter.
That was a reference to President Donald Trump\u2019s long-standing ambitions to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and the offer by last year\u2019s winner, Maria Corina Machado, to share it with him<\/a> as she sought support for her efforts in Venezuela.
\u201cEverybody asks me: \u2018When are you going to stop? When are you going to stop?\u2019\u201d Pillay said<\/a>, adding that despite turning 85 last month, she had no intention of doing so.
\u201cThe last thing I did was the report on Gaza, namely what\u2019s happening there is genocide,\u201d she said.
\u201cOne of the main reactions to that report was paying tribute to me for my courage,\u201d she added. \u201cBut why would you need courage to speak the truth? You interpret the law and you look at all the facts.\u201d
In later more formal remarks accepting the prize, she dedicated the award to \u201call of the survivors of international crimes,\u201d warning against efforts \u201cwhich attempt to weaken international criminal justice\u201d which \u201crisk returning us to a world in which power, rather than law, determines whose suffering matters.\u201d
Among her many positions, Pillay previously served as a judge on the International Criminal Court<\/a>, a frequent focus of ire for the Trump administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced fresh sanctions on the body on Friday, hours after the prize was announced.
\u201cWe will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate,\u201d Rubio said in a statement, threatening to continue a campaign \u201cto dismantle the ICC, brick by brick.\u201d
Agn\u00e8s Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, was with Pillay in Germany and among the first people to congratulate her on the prize.
\u201cThis could not be a better choice at a time of attacks against international justice,\u201d Callamard told NBC News. \u201cShe is a former ICC judge at a time when the U.S. administration is seeking to destroy the ICC,\u201d she said, praising her work leading the U.N. commission \u201cwhich found that Israel committed the crime of genocide at a time when many states are trying to defend and protect Israel\u2019s actions.\u201d
The ICC condemned the new U.S. sanctions Friday, and separately praised Pillay\u2019s win as \u201can important recognition of the vital role that international justice plays as a cornerstone of lasting peace.\u201d
Pillay was not among those speculated to be front-runners, who included Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of anti-Kremlin figure Alexei Navalny, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, and Mykola Kuleba<\/a>, who founded an organization to rescue Ukrainian children abducted and forcibly taken to Russia.
The Norwegian Nobel Institute said it had has registered a total of 287 candidates for this year\u2019s peace prize, with politicians, international judges and professors among those who can put names forward. The committee that decides the winner is composed of five members appointed by the Norwegian Parliament.
The leaders of Israel, Pakistan and Cambodia all said they nominated Trump for the prize, though he said this week he didn\u2019t think he would win.
\u201cI don\u2019t know what their decision is going to be,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Wednesday. \u201cThey have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me.\u201d
Trump did not congratulate Pillay on Friday. Instead, on Truth Social, he reposted a message from another user that said the Nobel committee had \u201cshamed itself beyond repair and demeaned the once great Nobel Peace Prize,\u201d describing Pillay as \u201can unabashed hater of America and Israel.\u201d
Alexander Smith is a senior reporter for\u00a0NBC News Digital based in London.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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For YouSettings news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeThe Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the South African legal pioneer Navanethem \u201cNavi\u201d Pillay for defending international law and institutions in a world in which increasingly \u201cmight overtakes right.\u201dPillay, 85, has a decadeslong career that spans defending Nelson Mandela and standing up against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}