Durban-born judge Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize
Navi Pillay started her legal career in apartheid-era Durban, representing people the state wanted silenced.
Decades later, she has received the world’s most famous peace award.
On Friday, 9 October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to the South African judge.
Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, 85, was honoured “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.”
It’s the 125th Nobel Peace Prize, and it puts Pillay alongside some of South Africa’s most famous names.
WHY NAVI PILLAY WON THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
According to Al Jazeera, the committee said Pillay had been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes warned that the system of international law “is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack”.
The committee also said that the ability to resolve conflicts without force or violence depends on the international rule of law.
Pillay was chosen from 287 nominations.
The prize comes with 12 million Swedish kronor (about R20 million).
FROM APARTHEID-ERA DURBAN TO THE WORLD’S COURTS
Pillay was born on 23 September 1941 in working-class Clairwood, Durban, into a family of Indian Tamil origin. Her father was a bus driver.
In 1967, she became the first woman to start a law practice in what was then Natal province.
During apartheid, she acted as a defence lawyer for Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists.
She also helped shape South Africa’s democracy. As a member of the Women’s National Coalition, she contributed to the equality clause in the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on grounds including race, gender, religion and sexual orientation.
She later became the first non-white woman judge of the High Court of South Africa.
A CAREER IN INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE
Pillay’s work took her far beyond South Africa.
She spent eight years on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which prosecuted those responsible for the 1994 genocide. For the last four, from 1999 to 2003, she served as its president.
Her work there helped establish rape as an act of genocide, a landmark in international law.
From 2003 to 2008, she served as a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC). She then became United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights.
She still sits on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the case in which Myanmar is accused of genocide.
In 2025, she headed an independent UN Commission of Inquiry which found that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
The commission does not speak on behalf of the UN. According to Reuters, Israel dismissed the report as “scandalous”.
Pillay reacted to the news with her trademark humour.
When she was told she’d won, she said she first thought “it must be a joke.”
As a lawyer and a judge, she added, she still wanted to verify it.
Later, speaking to a standing ovation in Nuremberg, Germany, she joked: “If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump.”
The quip was a reference to US President Donald Trump, who has made no secret of wanting to win the prize himself. The 2025 winner, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, even gave Trump her Nobel medal.
The moment was captured by Amnesty International secretary-general Agnès Callamard and shared on X.
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) October 9, 2026Amazing moment.
Navi Pillay has received the Nobel Peace Prize ! https://t.co/HL3r1PJzLO
We are at the Nuremberg Court; I cannot think of a stronger symbol for her Nobel prize.
We are all so thrilled!
This is her first reactions upon hearing the news: pic.twitter.com/Crbj6XdiyQ
SOUTH AFRICA’S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNERS
Pillay joins a proud list of South African Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Chief Albert Luthuli won in 1960. Archbishop Desmond Tutu followed in 1984. Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerkshared the prize in 1993.
That makes Pillay the fifth South African, and the first South African woman, to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
She will receive the award at a ceremony in Oslo on 10 December.
A bus driver’s daughter from Clairwood, who grew up under apartheid, now standing where Luthuli, Tutu and Mandela once stood.
Whatever your view of the cases she’s worked on, it’s a proud day for Durban, and for South Africa.
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