Zulfiqar Ali Shirazi
In the backdrop of excesses being committed by hegemons on international law and institutions responsible for its implementation, the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, on 9 October 2026, awarded the Peace Prize to South African jurist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay. The award is in recognition of her efforts to promote peace and international law, ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted with resolve and vigour.
This recognition is in fact of an illustrious legal career that spans her role as a practising lawyer and then a judge. This piece is written with a view to highlight what she did differently, in both these roles, to take a lead for others to follow. In my view, surprisingly, she didn’t do anything different. She only did what she and every law professional is expected to do: upholding the rule and applicability of law and justice across the board. What makes her look different is that she didn’t walk the walk. A leaf out of her practice as a lawyer and a jurist bears evidence of her three traits: she upheld her professional opinion independently regardless of pressures, she built sound legal reasoning, and she applied the same standard.
Pillay was born in Durban in 1941, to a bus driver. Due to her father’s meagre resources, the community raised money for Navi’s education. In 1967, she became the first woman to open a law practice in Natal and defended opponents of apartheid in courts under an arbitrary legal system. She stuck to her passion and kept fighting the system. In a 1971 terrorism trial, her defence team successfully exposed torture during police interrogation. In 1973, she won a case against a prison commander. The ruling established much-needed rights of political prisoners held under apartheid laws, foremost being access to lawyers. In both cases, she used the state’s own legal obligations against it. The government responded by denying her a passport for several years, but she didn’t relent and completed a master’s degree, leading to a doctorate at Harvard. She paid a personal cost but pursued every case on the law and the evidence; pure merit, without yielding to any pressure.
Pillay’s legal reasoning is best seen in the Akayesu case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Jean-Paul Akayesu was the mayor of Taba commune in Rwanda and the original indictment against him contained no rape charges. During testimony, Pillay noticed signs of sexual violence and questioned the witnesses herself. The judgment records that “as a result of evidence elicited by judicial questioning and reasoning, the Prosecutor amended the indictment to include rape charges.” The Trial Chamber then defined rape for the first time in international law as “a physical invasion of a sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive.” It held that rape could cause “serious bodily and mental harm,” an act the Genocide Convention already listed, and that “sexual violence can form an integral part of the process of destruction of a group.” The strength of this reasoning lies in its method. The court did not create a new crime. It applied existing treaty text, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” ( wording of Article II(b) of the 1948 Genocide Convention), to evidence that earlier courts had ignored. Consequently, the conviction was upheld on appeal in 2001, and as per legal scholar Valerie Oosterveld, the judgment “put an indelible stamp on the Rome Statute.” Pillay was one of three judges who signed it. We need to note that the Rome Statute provided the basis for the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998. In “The Bus Driver’s Daughter,” a 2006 profile published by Harvard Law School, Emily Newburger writes that Pillay “is credited with shaping and articulating Akayesu judgment’s arguments.” The lesson here for the legal fraternity is that a strong judgment is an outcome of law and the evidence, both, and of course their purpose-based interpretation. Rwanda indicates what such work can achieve over time. Suspects were arrested in 24 countries and tried before the tribunal. The process was slow, but it produced convictions and a permanent legal record.
Another outstanding quality of Navanethem Pillay’s professional undertakings was the consistency of applied standards. She later served on the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court. From 2008 to 2014, she was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She then chaired the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On 16 September 2025, the commission found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. It identified four of the five acts listed in the Genocide Convention, including measures intended to prevent births, and cited the destruction of a fertility clinic as one example. It found that Israel’s president, prime minister and former defence minister had incited genocide. The Gaza commission has now produced a record of its own, based on the Rwanda Convention and the same standard of proof. Although Israel rejected the findings, it wasn’t able to defy the method. The UN Commission of Inquiry applied the same standard, with genocidal intent being the only reasonable inference from the evidence. This work took two years, with the commission verifying evidence through its own investigation. The accused changed, though, but the standard did not.
Gaza carries a different lesson for the world to follow. Public opinion in support of Palestinian rights should be followed up by adding legal weight on its own. Outcomes of Pillay’s commission become relevant here, and this is what accords a legacy to Navi Pillay’s groundbreaking contributions to global legal processes.
The Nobel Committee’s choice reflects a view that no one can be let go scot-free in the world order, and to this effect, judicial institutions, jurists, and judgements do matter. The choice also revolves around the same legal trilogy: independence, sound reasoning and continuity of applied standards to verified evidence. Kudos, Madam Navi Pillay, for your contributions, and tough luck to those who prejudicially contested your nomination.
