‘Navi’ Pillay, South African jurist of Tamil descent, wins 2026 Peace Nobel

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee said.

In awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wants to remind the world that the rule of law – national and international – underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts non-violently. Peace requires justice, the Committee said.

Born into a family of Indian Tamil origin under apartheid in Durban, South Africa, Ms. Pillay became a lawyer and legal pioneer, confronting deep structural discrimination, segregation and exclusion.

She has served as a judge on the High Court in South Africa, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court. She was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and, until recently, she chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Ms. Pillay is a judge on the International Court of Justice in the case where Myanmar stands accused of genocide..

Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Venezuela’s María Corina Machado.

The announcement of medicine Nobel kicked off the Nobel announcement week. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries leading to a technique called optogenetics, which allows scientists to control select nerve cells using light.

Belgian-American particle physicist Francis Halzen is the recipient of Physics Nobel for his contributions to IceCube, a neutrino observatory in the South Pole, and for the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for untangling mysterious mirror images in molecules, a discovery that has been used to develop countless drugs.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, popularly known as Economics Nobel will be announced on October 12.

The winners will get a cash award of 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million). The award will be presented on December 10, the Nobel Prize day, also the death anniversary of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who in his will dictated that his estate should be used to fund “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”.

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