Navi Pillay, head of UN commission that accused Israel of genocide, wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway  — The South African-born jurist and former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, who presided over a commission that declared that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for what the committee described as her efforts to promote peace and international law.

Her win is sure to be seen as a stinging, high-profile rebuke to US President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of a UN commission she led that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Both leaders also have been highly critical of the institutions where Pillay has worked, with Israel previously accusing her of being a “Hamas proxy” with a long history of vehemently anti-Israeli and antisemitic positions.

Pillay’s work “is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing her win in Oslo, Norway. She is currently an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice.

Israel slammed the decision as a “grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.”

Pillay, 85, received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering to discuss international law in Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the trials of Nazi war criminals that helped lay the foundations of international law.

“Firstly, at this venue, your applause means a great deal to me,” she said to a standing ovation. “You know, you don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.”

And joking, she added: “But being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.”

She also appeared to taunt Trump and his well-known desire to win the prize.

“If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” she said during a standing ovation captured by Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard in Nuremberg and posted on the social network X.

Amazing moment.

Navi Pillay has received the Nobel Peace Prize ! https://t.co/HL3r1PJzLO

We are at the Nuremberg Court; I cannot think of a stronger symbol for her Nobel prize.

We are all so thrilled!

This is her first reactions upon hearing the news: pic.twitter.com/Crbj6XdiyQ

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— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) October 9, 2026

While her work has been global in scope, criticism often has been fiercely local, notably in places like Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa.

Long history of anti-Israel bias

Israel reacted angrily to the news of her win.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said that she’d be a frontrunner if there were an award “for lies, hatred and blood libels.”

“Her role in the relentless, politically motivated demonization of Israel and promotion of the genocide lie speaks volumes,” said the MFA.

“Awarding Pillay the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice.”

“Now that the Nobel commission has rewarded the biggest lie of the 21st century, Joseph Goebbels is certainly applauding from hell,” the statement said, referring to the infamous Nazi minister of propaganda.

If there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender. She’d be a frontrunner.

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Her role in the relentless, politically motivated demonization of Israel and promotion of the genoLIE speaks volumes.

Awarding Pillay the Nobel Peace…

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 9, 2026

Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the UN-backed Human Rights Council in 2021. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

The commission also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister “have incited the commission of genocide.” Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established, has strenuously denied the charges.

The commission does not speak on behalf of the UN. While it is not a legal body, its reports can influence diplomatic pressure and serve to gather evidence for later use by courts.

She told AFP at the time that her team had shared “thousands of pieces of information” with prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, which is separately probing allegations that Israel carried out genocide in the war in Gaza that was sparked by the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre that killed some 1,200 people and saw another 251 taken hostage.

Pillay’s report only made a fleeting reference to the massacre, while not including any details on the attack that caused the war in Gaza.

At the time, the Foreign Ministry denounced  the report, saying it came from “Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic position.”

The Nobel committee said the prize did not amount ot its endorsement of the findings of genocide.

“It’s her report, the Commission’s report, and of course we have great faith in her professionalism, in her integrity, but that work is of a UN inquiry commission. It will be decided by the international ICJ, the international court… So the Nobel Committee is not the court,” Watne Frydnes, told AFP when asked to comment.

The commission she headed was created before the current Gaza war, and was the first to have an open-ended mandate from the UN rights body, and critics say such permanent scrutiny shows anti-Israel bias in the 47-member-state council.

At the time of its formation, Israel said it would not cooperate with the commission, noting both the UN and Pillay’s long history of anti-Israel bias and calling the commission “morally bankrupt.”

UN Watch, a pro-Israel monitor, has also documented Pillay’s history of anti-Israel bias.

Pillay signed a petition in June 2020 organized by the South African Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (SA BDS) Coalition, entitled “Sanction Apartheid Israel!”

Then in a May 2021 lecture, she described Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as “inhuman” and compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.

Last year, she backed a member of the commission, Miloon Kothari, when he questioned whether Israel should be a member of the UN, and said social media was “controlled largely by the Jewish lobby.”

Pillay was also the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, during which time she frequently criticized Israel’s actions.

In 2014, over 100 members of US Congress signed a letter to Pillay decrying the UNHRC’s bias against Israel under her leadership, saying the council “simply cannot be taken seriously as a human rights organization” while it was probing Israel but not Hamas.

Pillay has repeatedly rejected accusations from critics who accused her of antisemitism or allegedly turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel.

In an interview with the AP last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the UN rights chief from 2008 to 2014.

Focus on Trump’s battle with ICC

Her win puts the focus on a court under pressure from Trump

Pillay’s win brings renewed attention to Trump’s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court. The Trump administration already has sanctioned 13 of the ICC’s staff members, among them key prosecutors and nine judges, including the court’s Japanese President Tomoko Akane.

He has also cited the ICC’s decision to bring war crimes charges against Netanyahu and Gallant.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has launched what he called a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court.”

In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump called the court an “out-of-control institution” and an “anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction” over the US as he urged member states to quit the “rogue institution immediately.”

There are fears the court as a whole could be sanctioned, a move that could seriously hamper its ability to mete out justice.

The Norwegian committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict.

Watne Frydnes said the award was a message to those seeking to undermine “the international rules-based system and the institutions.”

“At a time when the number of wars and conflicts is rising, and when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack, the Nobel Committee wishes to issue a reminder that the ability to resolve conflicts without force or violence is dependent on the international rule of law,” the committee wrote in a news release.

“An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world.”

Pillay is currently serving as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar.

There were nearly 300 nominations for this year’s prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo received nominations for 287 candidates for this year’s prize, with just over a quarter of them organizations. Experts say the committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals.

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 Trump 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.

The Peace Prize follows a week of Nobel announcements.

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), whether for an individual, a small group of laureates, or an organization.

Lazar Berman contributed to this report.