{"id":845,"date":"2026-10-09T17:08:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T17:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/ipra\/?p=845"},"modified":"2026-10-09T17:09:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T17:09:38","slug":"navi-pillay-nobel-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/ipra\/2026\/10\/navi-pillay-nobel-peace-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nobel Peace Prize to be proud of"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced South African jurist Navi Pillay as recipient of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>, they engaged in a very pleasing if not predicable political somersault. Last year\u2019s heinous award, given to Venezuelan warmonger<\/a> and Donald Trump acolyte<\/a> Maria Corina Machado, had many proclaiming that the esteemed prize was now totally and forever discredited<\/a>, a useless 20th century relic that was no longer a measure of any true peace paradigm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I argued, however, that the prize was always thus: a mixture of left-center-right juggling that has always shifted from some very problematic awards (as in the classic awarding to Henry Kissinger) to amazing and extremely strategic choices \u2014 such as the granting of East Timor\u2019s Jose Ramos Horta the prize in the midst of his nation\u2019s struggle for independence, or the awarding of Archbishop Tutu at a time when he had gone out on a limb endorsing sanctions against apartheid South Africa when the liberal establishment suggested that sanctions would only hurt Black South Africans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the outcry one year ago against Machado, and the subsequent media circus when she traveled to Washington, D.C. to gift her prize to Trump, it should serve as no surprise that the Nobel Committee attempts to balance the see-saw this year by awarding a progressive if not radical activist. The 2026 award, though, has some important elements of significant merit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, or UNHCR, from 2008 to 2014, Navanethem Pillay distinguished herself as a modern jurist with a broad vision of what contemporary and future international law should look like. Serving as President Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Pillay was central in framing the landmark decision that rape can be and is a form of genocide<\/a> rather than a \u201cspoil of war.\u201d Leading the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Pillay presided over cases condemning the use of child soldiers in the Congo and elsewhere. Her support of LGBTQ rights and broad definitions of gender identity ultimately led to a UNHRC policy resolution on these rights<\/a>, passed in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, Pillay\u2019s chairing of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory determined both that Israel as well as Hamas had committed war crimes in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, and primarily that Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza over the past several years constituted acts of genocide<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n