00:00The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Navi Pillai for her efforts to promote peace and international law.
00:09The Norwegian Nobel Committee said her work had helped strengthen the global legal order
00:13and efforts to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
00:18Born under apartheid in Durban, South Africa, Pillai became a lawyer and defendant Nelson Mandela and others who fought apartheid.
00:25She later served as a judge in South Africa at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal
00:32Court.
00:33Pillai also served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
00:37and later chaired a UN Commission on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
00:43The Nobel Committee highlighted her role at the Rwanda Tribunal where rape and sexual violence
00:47were found to be capable of constituting crimes against humanity and genocide.
00:51The Committee said her career showed why international law remains important for resolving conflicts without violence.
00:58In the words of the Committee, peace requires justice.
01:02On her ex-post, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Pillai,
01:07praising her lifelong commitment to justice, peace and human dignity
01:10and saying her courage and defense of the rule of law remain a guide in a world that needs justice
01:15more than ever.
01:17Today is also serving as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in the Gambia v. Myanmar,
01:23is president of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty,
01:27sits on the Information and Democracy Commission
01:29and was the first non-white woman judge on South Africa's high court
01:33and the first South African to earn a doctorate in law from Harvard.
01:37This happened in the Rwandan genocide.
