Pillay, 85, became the fifth South African to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, South African judge Navi Pillay, gestures after a press conference in Geneva on September 16, 2025. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini/ AFP.
When someone tells you why they should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, they probably shouldn’t be awarded it.
That’s exactly what happened to US President Donald Trump for the second straight year as South African judge and human rights champion Navi Pillay won the prize on Friday in recognition of her work against war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since Trump returned to the White House for a second time in 2025, he has campaigned hard for the prize and made it clear he should win it.
However, Pillay was awarded the prize.
Trump said: “I never heard of this particular person, but congratulations anyway. The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t.”
He added: “The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilisation.”
Pillay, 85, became the fifth South African to win the award after ANC leader Albert Luthuli in 1960, Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984 and former South African presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, in a joint nomination in 1993.
Strange timing for sanctions
In strange timing, the US later on Friday imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), vowing to cripple the tribunal’s operations just hours after the prize went to the former ICC judge, who warned of mounting political attacks on the court.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Pillay a “bigot” against Jews for saying Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, with the office adding on X: “The Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass. It has awarded its highest honour to a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”
Pillay, we are proud of you. Fighting for people’s human rights does not come without many sacrifices.
