10/09/2026
Congratulations to the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Judge Pillay! 👏👏👏👏👏
Some Nobel laureates are easy to celebrate. This is one of them.
Navi Pillay’s first day in court came when she was 5, testifying against a man who’d robbed her.
She grew up to be the first woman of color to open a law practice in Natal, in 1967, under apartheid, defending its prisoners, including her own husband.
When Nelson Mandela became president, he nominated her to the High Court, then recommended her for the UN tribunal trying Rwanda’s genocide.
There, as the only woman on the tribunal, she helped shape the landmark 1998 Akayesu ruling, the first genocide conviction by an international court and the first to recognize sexual violence as a weapon of genocide.
Every survivor who has since gotten justice in an international courtroom stands on that ruling.
She went on to serve as an International Criminal Court judge and as the UN’s top human rights official.
More recently, she chaired the UN inquiry that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
And at 85, she’s on the International Court of Justice, hearing the case over Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya.
The Nobel committee said it chose her as the system of international law comes under pressure, including from the Trump administration’s attacks on the International Criminal Court.
A bus driver’s daughter from a segregated city spent 60 years insisting that the powerful answer for what they do to the powerless, and the world just told her she was right.
Congratulations, Judge Pillay.
