Nobel Peace Prize 2026 awarded to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, former International Criminal Court judge

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 was awarded Friday to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, a South African-born former judge with the International Criminal Court who went on to become the United Nations human rights chief and is still serving with the U.N.'s other judicial body, the International Court of Justice. She also led a U.N. inquiry last year that accused Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and Israel was quick to condemn her receiving the honor on Friday. 

The Nobel Committee said it was honoring Pillay "for her efforts to promote peace and international law," and that awarding the prize to someone with her body of work on international justice was a message to those seeking to undermine international law institutions.

The South African-born former United Nations human rights chief, who is 85, was recognized for her efforts to promote peace and international law, said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

"This is definitely a message to those who are undermining the international system and institutions," Frydnes said. 

"The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack," he said, noting what the committee saw as a shift "towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice."

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has come under fire from Israel and the Trump administration in recent years, with the U.S. imposing sanctions against the U.N. court last year after it issued an arrest warrant in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President Trump accused the court of "illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel."

The ICC condemned the U.S. sanctions against its staff and said they were intended to "harm (the Court's) independent and impartial judicial work."

Pillay served as an ICC judge from 2003 until 2008, when she resigned to take on the role of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was the chair of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that said last year it had concluded Israel's actions in Gaza amounted to genocide. Israel dismissed the report as "scandalous."

Pillay is currently serving as an ad hoc judge for the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is separate to the ICC, in the case of Gambia v. Myanmar, in which Myanmar's ruling military junta stands accused of genocide over its treatment of the nation's Rohingya Muslim minority in the western state of Rakhine.

Frydnes said the committee wasn't immediately able to reach Pillay Friday to tell her she had been awarded the prize, adding from the podium that if she was watching and saw a call coming in from a Norwegian phone number, to "please pick up." 

She soon appeared in a video posted on social media by the head of Amnesty International, being applauded by well-wishers at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany, where Nazi leaders were put on trial for their crimes against humanity after World War II.

"Perhaps it was meant to be that I was in this historic courtroom... when the announcement was made and I was informed of the award," Pillay said. "We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack ... This worsening reality is particularly visible with the attacks on the International Criminal Court."  

"If you clap a little bit louder I may share this prize with Trump," she quipped, drawing laughs from the crowd. She said that when she was informed that she had been awarded the prize, she first thought "it must be a joke," and that as a "lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this thing."

She noted that she was lauded by the Nobel committee for her courage, which she questioned, saying: "You can imagine how surprised I was. Why would you need courage to speak the truth? You interpret the law, you look at all the facts, so it's an impartial decision you make."

Israel condemns Pillay's honor, U.S. further sanctions ICC 

The Israeli Foreign Ministry blasted the Nobel committee for awarding the prize to Pillay on Friday, saying in a statement posted online that "if there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn't just be a contender. She'd be a frontrunner. Her role in the relentless, politically motivated demonization of Israel and promotion of the genoLIE speaks volumes."

It condemned the committee for awarding her as "the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice."

A separate statement posted on the X account of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Nobel committee had "lost its moral compass. It has awarded its highest honor to a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state."

The Trump administration, hours later, announced further sanctions against the ICC. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the ICC a "threat to U.S. sovereignty" and said the new measures were deemed necessary to ensure the court, which the U.S. has never been a state party to, can never prosecute a U.S. national. 

He said the new sanctions would "ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate," adding: "We expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American servicemembers for their defense, to rein in the court. If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, brick by brick, until Americans are threatened no longer."

The ICC has never prosecuted or indicted a U.S. national, but it has investigated the actions of U.S. forces abroad, in countries where it does have jurisdiction, including Afghanistan, and it could theoretically seek to prosecute Americans. 

According to Human Rights Watch, there are "limited situations in which the ICC has jurisdiction over the nationals of countries, such as the U.S., that have not joined the Rome Statute. This includes when a citizen of a non-member country commits war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide on the territory of an ICC member country. That's why U.S. citizens may be subject to the court's jurisdiction as it investigates alleged grave crimes that took place in Afghanistan."

Nobel prize history

Last year, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, winning recognition as a woman "who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness."

Machado gave President Trump, who has long said he deserves the prize, her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: The Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.

Nominations can be made by a select group of people and organizations, including heads of state or politicians serving at a national level, university professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past Nobel Prize recipients and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee itself.

Four of this year's Nobels were announced earlier this week. The Nobel for medicine went to three scientists whose work led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works. The physics award recognized a scientist's efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos. The chemistry prize recognized two scientists for untangling mysterious mirror images in molecules, a discovery that has been used to develop countless drugs.

Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson won the literature prize Thursday for "bold and inventive" works that fuse the classical and the modern and blur the boundaries of poetry and prose.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).

Education activist Malala Yousafzai is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate; she won at 17 in 2014.

The United States is the most-credited country, with 24 awards naming U.S. institutions or individuals, ahead of the United Kingdom (13) and Switzerland (11). No laureate listed as American has won since then-President Barack Obama was awarded in 2009.

The prize has gone unawarded on 19 occasions, most of them during the world wars. In 1948, the year Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, no prize was awarded; he had been nominated 12 times and never won.

In 1939, a Swedish member of parliament nominated Adolf Hitler, then withdrew the nomination, saying it was never meant seriously.