The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African human-rights lawyer and judge Navi Pillay in recognition of a decadeslong career "ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted."
Announcing the winner Friday, Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes described her as "a person who with exceptional courage and integrity has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order."
Pillay has left a profound mark on international law over her legal career, the committee said. A former judge on South Africa's High Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court, she later served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Pillay also recently chaired the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and currently sits ad hoc on the International Court of Justice in Myanmar's genocide trial.
The Nobel Committee honored Pillay at a time when international bodies like the ICC, where she sat as a judge from 2003 to 2008, are under fire. The Trump administration has pledged to dismantle the ICC and imposed a raft of sanctions against its officials after the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
"We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack," Pillay said at a press conference Friday.
"These efforts that we are now seeing, which are attempts to weaken international criminal justice, endanger the progress painstakingly made since Nuremberg, and they risk returning us to a world in which power rather than law determines whose suffering matters."
"This award strengthens my conviction that we must stand together in defense of the rule of law, in defense of independent courts and an international legal order braced on principle, rather than selectivity," she said.
Pillay, 85 years old, was at the Nuremberg Court in Germany when she learned of her award. Upon hearing the news, she smiled and shrugged in disbelief as colleagues applauded.
"If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump," she joked in reference to the previous laureate, María Corina Machado, who presented her own prize to the U.S. president earlier this year.
"The last thing I did is the delivery of the report on Gaza, naming what's happening there as genocide. One of the main reactions to that report is paying tribute to me for my courage," Pillay said. "Why would you need courage to speak the truth? You interpret the law, you look at all the facts," she added.
Later, at the press conference, she said, "I'm still reeling with surprise."
In 1967, Pillay became the first woman to start a law practice in Natal Province, South Africa, beginning a decadeslong career in which she has presided over both criminal and civil cases. She was heavily involved in the antiapartheid movement, defending Nelson Mandela and his allies in the African National Congress.
Through her work she was able to draw attention to the regime's state-sponsored torture, illegal interrogation tactics and harsh solitary confinement conditions. In a landmark case against authorities at the notorious Robben Island prison, Pillay secured the right for political prisoners to access legal representation.
After Mandela was elected president in South Africa's first democratic elections, he personally nominated Pillay in 1995 to serve as a judge on the High Court. Born into an Indian Tamil family in Durban, she was the first nonwhite woman to hold the role.
Pillay was later elected by the United Nations General Assembly to be a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she served for eight years, including four years as president.
She has written on and practiced in international criminal law, international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and more particularly on crimes of sexual violence in conflicts. She is also president of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty.
"She's a very quiet and very reserved personality, despite her tough legal reputation," said William Gumede, a former antiapartheid activist and political scientist who has known Pillay since the 1990s.
"The award of the Nobel Peace Prize is an apt recognition of a lifetime of dedication to mankind," said Melanie Naidoo, Pillay's niece, who is also a lawyer. "She has been a profound inspiration to me and to many other women, especially those of South African Indian descent. She rose above the challenges of being born female in an Indian community, being born nonwhite in apartheid South Africa and being a woman in the legal fraternity when there was no place for her."
Pillay has criticized the international order for what she describes as a lack of political will to properly defend human rights.
"Throughout my career I have been asked how I kept going in the face of such horror, such resistance, and such politics," she said during an acceptance speech for the 2025 Sydney Peace Prize. "My answer is simple: I drew strength from the people whose rights we defend."
"We do not have the luxury of giving up, because injustice never takes a day off."
The Nobel Prize comes with an award of 12 million Swedish kronor, equivalent to roughly $1.2 million.