Navi Pillay
Navanethem "Navi" Pillay
Nobel Peace Prize 2026
Born: 23 September 1941, Durban, South Africa
Prize motivation: “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”
Champion for international legal order
Navanethem “Navi” Pillay has been at the forefront in the development of an international legal order. Ms Pillay was educated in the law and soon began defending activists who stood up against apartheid. She grew up in a family of Indian Tamil descent in Durban, South Africa, where in 1967 she founded her own law firm. In the 1980s she studied at Harvard University and earned her Doctor of Juridical Science degree there in 1988.
Dr. Pillay was appointed to the High Court of South Africa in 1995. Four years later she became a judge and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where she gained distinction for her role in establishing that sexual violence and rape as well as the spreading of propaganda could lead to indictment for crimes against humanity and genocide. She was then named to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC). From 2008 to 2014 she served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Navi Pillay also chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2021 to 2025, and in 2019 she became an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide. Read More Here : Navanethem Pillay – Facts – 2026 - NobelPrize.org









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