Who's Navi Pillay?

South African jurist and judge Navanethem "Navi" Pillay has won the2026 Nobel Peace Prizefor "his work for peace and international law."

Pillay was born on 23 September 1941 in Durban, South Africa, within a family of Srilan descent.

She holds a law degree from Natal University and was the first black woman to open a law firm in that province of South Africa, from where she defended political prisoners detained without trial during apartheid , becoming a doctor of human rights and international law at Harvard University in 1982.

In 1995, she was appointed a judge of the South African High Court and was the first black woman to serve.

He was a judge at the International Tribunal for Rwanda from 1995 to 2003, during which time he presided over a historic ruling that genocide had occurred and that rape could constitute genocide.

He then served as a judge of the International Criminal Court based in The Hague from 2003 to 2008. Urte in which he was appointed High Commissioner of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and served until 2014.

In 2021, he assumed the chairmanship of the UN Independent International Commission for Research on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and left office in November 2025. The committee declared in September last year that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Pillay currently chairs the International Committee against the Death Penalty . 

Among the awards he has received are the 2025 Sydney Peace Prize and the 2026 Olof Palme Prize, shared with John Dugard. In addition, in 2023 the Basque Government awarded the 2023 Rene Cassin Prize to the International Committee against the Death Penalty.