{"id":27761,"date":"2026-10-09T08:32:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T02:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/?p=27761"},"modified":"2026-10-09T18:42:59","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T12:42:59","slug":"former-icc-judge-navi-pillay-wins-2026-nobel-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/?p=27761","title":{"rendered":"Former ICC judge Navi Pillay wins 2026 Nobel Peace Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge who oversaw a UN report that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday “for \u200cher efforts to promote peace and international law”.
\nGiving the prize to Pillay, 85, who has been a judge on several international courts, including the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, underlined the importance of maintaining an organised international order, the Nobel committee said in its citation.<\/p>\n

The Hague-based ICC has long been a target of US President Donald Trump, whose campaign against it has escalated since the court announced arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister last year.
\n“The system of \u200binternational law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” the Nobel committee said.
\n“We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and \u200bjustice. Whenever might overtakes right, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful co-existence.”
\nThe Nobel committee’s citation made no reference to Trump, nor Israel.<\/p>\n

Pillay was also chair of the \u2060UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that concluded last year that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Israel dismissed the report at the time as “scandalous” and “fake”.<\/p>\n

Pillay received news of the \u200baward while she was attending a legal conference in the building in Nuremberg, Germany, where the first international criminal tribunal was set up in 1945-1946 to judge the crimes of the Nazis.
\n“The last thing I did is the \u200bdelivery of the report on Gaza, naming what’s happening there as genocide,” Pillay told a crowd gathering to celebrate the award, a video posted on social media by the head of rights group Amnesty International showed.
\n“If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” she added, to laughter, in an apparent reference to the decision by last year’s laureate, Maria Corina Machado, to give her Nobel medal to the US president in January to help gain support for her campaign \u200bfor a democratic Venezuela.<\/p>\n

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‘FIRM MORAL COMPASS’<\/p>\n

Born \u200bin Durban, in South Africa’s Natal province, in a \u200bfamily of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay served as \u2060UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.
\nIn 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.
\nShe was the fifth South African national to win the Nobel Peace Prize, after Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, Archbishop Desmond \u200bTutu and Albert Luthuli.
\nPillay held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict, and demonstrated a firm moral compass in her \u200blong career, said the committee.
\n“A \u2060common 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.
\nPillay continues to work as a judge, currently serving on the International Court of Justice in the case where Myanmar stands accused of genocide, the citation said.
\nThe peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado \u2060won in 2025.
\nThe Nobel \u200bPeace Prize, worth 12 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.2 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary \u200bof the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards, opens new tab in his 1895 will.<\/p>\n

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