South African judge Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Navi Pillay of South Africa, a judge and former UN rights chief whose career has seen her tackle allegations of genocide in Gaza, Rwanda and Myanmar, prompting a furious response from Israel.

Pillay once sat on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and in acknowledging the award she condemned attacks on institutions such as the tribunal. But hours after the prize was announced, the United States announced new sanctions against the ICC, provoking swift condemnation from member states and the United Nations.

Pillay, speaking from the courtroom in Nuremberg, Germany where the trials of World War II Nazi leaders took place, dedicated her prize to the "survivors of international crimes".

But Israel issued an angry response to the award, saying it legitimised "anti-Israel hatred", and that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels must be "applauding from hell".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the prize showed the Nobel committee had "lost its moral compass" by honouring "a bigot".

The Palestinian foreign ministry said giving the prize to Pillay honoured "all those who stand firm in defending international law and justice".

Pillay, 85, is currently a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case in which Myanmar also stands accused of genocide. She has spent her career defending international law.

She has been "instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted," said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

The daughter of a bus driver in a family of Tamil descent, her career has taken her from South African courts, where she defended anti-apartheid activists, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda after its 1994 genocide, and the ICC.

Pillay was the UN human rights commissioner from 2008 to 2014.

She headed the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which last year found that genocide was occurring in Gaza. It does not speak on behalf of the UN.

Pillay told AFP at the time that her team had shared "thousands of pieces of information" with ICC prosecutors.

Israel categorically rejected the report findings as "distorted and false".

Pillay's "independence, her expertise and steadfastness have made her one of the most respected international jurists of our time," the Nobel committee said.

In Nuremberg, Pillay said world leaders have a "legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war".

"We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack," she said.

That was "particularly visible with the attacks on the International Criminal Court", she added.

US President Donald Trump last month called on ICC member states to quit the body, calling it an anti-American "out-of-control institution". On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would ban transactions with what he called a "rogue court".

"Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC," Rubio said in a statement.

The US sanctions were welcomed by Israel but condemned by the United Nations, the European Union and court member states including Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Canada.

The decision to award the prize to Pillay was "a clear message to those who are putting pressure on these institutions, to those who are sanctioning the judges and are attacking the institutions," Frydnes told AFP. "That needs to stop."

Earlier, Pillay reacted to news of the prize with a quip about Trump's well-documented desire to win the prize himself.

"If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump," she said during a standing ovation captured on video and posted online.

The Nobel committee did not mention the allegations against Israel in Gaza in its comments awarding Pillay the prize.

It told AFP it was up to the international court to rule on whether Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide.

Pillay noted that many had paid tribute to her courage in that report.

"You can imagine how surprised I was," she said. "Why would you need courage to speak the truth?"

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has made no secret of his desire to win the Nobel Peace prize.

But his war against Iran, his territorial expansion ambitions as in Greenland, his hard line on migrants, and his attacks on multilateralism and the media have, according to experts in Oslo, disqualified him.

The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million.

The award will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prize's creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.