A Nobel Peace Prize to Save International Law in Peril

The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay comes at a time when international law is increasingly being called into question, weakened by the growing number of conflicts and attacks on the institutions tasked with upholding it. For several months, reports and statements from international organizations have warned in succession of the threats facing human rights and the foundations of the global legal order. Israel’s strong reaction to the award, along with the latest U.S. offensive against the International Criminal Court, illustrates the situation.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to jurist Navi Pillay, an 85-year-old South African who has devoted much of her life to defending international law. Ms. Pillay notably chaired the independent UN commission of inquiry that last year accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Throughout her career, the South African, who grew up under apartheid, has confronted the worst atrocities, from Rwanda to the Middle East. “We are living through a period in which international law and human rights are facing major political attacks,” she warned on Friday, dedicating her Nobel Prize “to all survivors of international crimes” at a press conference held in Nuremberg, in a courtroom where leading Nazi officials had been tried…

A tireless human rights defender

A lawyer of Indian descent who later became a judge and then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2008–2014), Ms. Pillay is known for her ability to handle the most difficult cases.

Her career took her from South African courts, where she defended anti-apartheid activists, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, via the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands.

She gained worldwide recognition for her sharp criticism of the repression by several governments of popular protests across the Arab world, particularly in Libya and Syria.

Born in 1941 in the coastal city of Durban, the daughter of a bus driver and from a family of Tamil origin, Navi Pillay has had an extraordinary life.

She grew up in a poor neighborhood in the port city, studied law, and then earned a doctorate from the prestigious U.S. university Harvard.

She became the first woman of color to open a law firm in her province of KwaZulu-Natal and vigorously defended opponents of apartheid.

“Cry or fight”

A year after Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994, she became the first woman of color appointed to South Africa’s High Court. That same year, with Mandela’s support, she joined the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

She was among the judges who handed down a landmark ruling recognizing rape as a weapon of genocide.

“We endured the worst insults and racial discrimination; we were mistreated and treated as though we were nothing,” Ms. Pillay told AFP in a 2023 interview. Under apartheid, the Indian community was classified as a separate racial group and subjected to extensive discrimination.

The choice was simple: be “weak and cry” or “fight every match,” she stressed. “I always knew who I was and how to fight every form of discrimination: by daring to speak out and condemn it. That is what I did at the UN,” she added.

Israel invokes… Goebbels

In September 2025, the commission of inquiry she chaired—which does not speak on behalf of the UN—concluded that Israel had been committing genocide in Gaza since the start of the war triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023.

Israel had categorically rejected the report, calling it “biased and deceitful” and accusing its authors of anti-Semitic bias.

Posters in Paris.

The Nobel Prize awarded to Ms. Pillay legitimizes “anti-Israel hatred,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Friday on X, adding that Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels must be “applauding from hell.”

In 2024, the International Criminal Court also issued arrest warrants, which remain unexecuted, for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

In response, Donald Trump had already sanctioned several ICC judges, prosecutors and staff members. Last month, he went further, calling on member states to leave the institution, which he described as “malicious.”

“Rogue court”

On Friday, hours after the Nobel Prize announcement, the U.S. government doubled down by announcing new sanctions against the Court, justifying the measures as an effort to “defend American sovereignty.” “They want more power, and they want it at our expense,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted, calling the ICC a “rogue court.”

“We hope to see our allies rein in the Court. Otherwise, the United States will continue dismantling the ICC, brick by brick, until Americans can no longer be threatened,” he added.

Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the U.S. sanctions, calling the ICC a “deadly danger to law-abiding democracies.” “The ICC is not a court. It is a political entity,” Netanyahu said. On X, the Israeli prime minister also described Ms. Pillay as a “sectarian” person who “demonizes Jews.”