South African jurist Navi Pillay won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on 9 October, becoming her country’s fifth laureate, hours before Washington sanctioned the International Criminal Court she once served.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured Pillay, 85, for her efforts to promote peace and international law. Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes announced the award in Oslo. The committee said she had been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
The timing turned the prize into a test of how far the world’s major powers still back international justice. Later the same day, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an institution, not just its officials. The measure bars US companies and financial services from dealing with the court. The Treasury gave firms six months to wind down their business with it.
The ICC called the sanctions an attack on the rule of law and said its work would continue. Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom said in a joint statement that they strongly disagreed with Washington’s move.
Pillay joins Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk as South African Peace Prize winners. She learned of the award at a conference in the Nuremberg courtroom where Nazi leaders were tried after the Second World War. Reacting there, she joked about President Donald Trump’s public campaign for the prize: “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.” She dedicated the award to survivors of international crimes and to those defending international criminal justice.
Born in Durban in 1941 to a family of Indian Tamil descent, Pillay worked as a lawyer under apartheid. She defended political prisoners and won them access to lawyers. In 1995 she became the first non-white woman to sit on South Africa’s High Court. She then served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which established that rape and sexual violence could amount to genocide. She later served as an ICC judge and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She now sits at the International Court of Justice in the genocide case against Myanmar.
The award drew a sharp response from Israel. Pillay chaired the UN commission that concluded in 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, a finding Israel rejects. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Nobel Committee had lost its moral compass and accused Pillay of lies. The Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch also condemned the choice, accusing Pillay of long-standing bias against Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called her a steadfast and independent voice of justice. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also congratulated her on the award.
Washington’s campaign against the court has escalated through 2026. Rubio said in July that the United States would dismantle the ICC “brick by brick” if necessary. In September, at the UN General Assembly, Trump urged all member states to quit the court. Neither the United States nor Israel is a party to the ICC.
The prize will be presented in Oslo on 10 December 2026.
