(AFP) – The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to judge and former UN rights chief Navi Pillay of South Africa drew backlash from US President Donald Trump, who called the decision “disgraceful”. Pillay, 85, has spent her career defending international law, working against war crimes and crimes against humanity. But Trump labelled the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s choice as “a disgraceful and embarrassing decision”, telling a rally of his supporters in Syracuse, New York he had “never heard of” Pillay.
“The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t,” he said. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has made no secret of his desire to win the prestigious award. Hours after Pillay was named laureate, the United States announced new sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC), provoking swift condemnation from member states and the United Nations. Pillay once sat on the ICC and in acknowledging the award she condemned attacks on institutions such as the tribunal.
Pillay, speaking from the courtroom in Nuremberg, Germany where the trials of World War II Nazi leaders took place, dedicated her prize to the “survivors of international crimes”. The judge’s career has seen her tackle allegations of genocide in Rwanda, Myanmar and Gaza, prompting a furious response from Israel. Israel said the award legitimised “anti-Israel hatred”, and that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels must be “applauding from hell”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the prize showed the Nobel committee had “lost its moral compass” by honouring “a bigot”. The Palestinian foreign ministry said giving the prize to Pillay honoured “all those who stand firm in defending international law and justice”.
– ‘Independence, expertise’ – Pillay is currently a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case in which Myanmar also stands accused of genocide. She has been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo. The daughter of a bus driver in a family of Tamil descent, her career has taken her from South African courts, where she defended anti-apartheid activists, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda after its 1994 genocide, and the ICC. Pillay was the UN human rights commissioner from 2008 to 2014.
She headed the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which found last year that genocide was occurring in Gaza. It does not speak on behalf of the UN. Pillay told AFP at the time that her team had shared “thousands of pieces of information” with ICC prosecutors. Israel categorically rejected the report findings as “distorted and false”. Pillay’s “independence, her expertise and steadfastness have made her one of the most respected international jurists of our time,” the Nobel committee said.
– ICC sanctioned – In Nuremberg, Pillay said world leaders have a “legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war”. “We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack,” she said. That was “particularly visible with the attacks on the International Criminal Court”, she added. Trump called on ICC member states last month to quit the body, calling it an anti-American “out-of-control institution”. On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would ban transactions with what he called a “rogue court”.
The US sanctions were welcomed by Israel but condemned by the United Nations, the European Union and court member states including Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Canada. The decision to award the prize to Pillay was “a clear message to those who are putting pressure on these institutions, to those who are sanctioning the judges and are attacking the institutions,” Frydnes told AFP. Earlier, Pillay reacted to news of the prize with a quip about Trump’s well-documented desire to win the award. “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” she joked during a standing ovation captured on video and posted online.
The award, which will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million. burs-jj/tw/cms/tc – Pierre-Henry DESHAYES
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