SA’s Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize for championing peace and international law

South African judge Navanethem “Navi’ Pillay, 85, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

South African judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, 85, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, 9 October, “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

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, the committee said.

“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,” the committee said.

Navi Pillay was the chairperson of the United Nations 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”.

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 just under R20-million, is due to be presented in Oslo on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will. DM/Reuters