OSLO, Norway - South African jurist Navanethem "Navi" Pillay won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee described as her efforts to promote peace and international law.

Pillay, 85, received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum in the same courtroom where leading Nazi officials were prosecuted after World War II. Committee chairman Jorgen Watne Frydnes said her career showed exceptional courage and integrity and reflected the principle that peace depends on justice rather than the will of the strongest.

Born into a Tamil family in Durban under apartheid, Pillay became a lawyer and defended political prisoners, including efforts to establish rights for Nelson Mandela and others held on Robben Island. After apartheid ended, Mandela appointed her as South Africa's first nonwhite woman to serve as a High Court judge.

Her international career included service at the tribunal for the Rwandan genocide, the International Criminal Court and as United Nations high commissioner for human rights from 2008 to 2014. She is now an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in the genocide case brought by Gambia against Myanmar over its treatment of the Rohingya.

The award also renewed fierce arguments over Pillay's recent work. She chaired a U.N.-backed commission of inquiry that concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza and accused senior Israeli leaders of incitement. Israel rejects those findings and did not cooperate with the commission. The same commission separately accused Hamas of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during the October 7, 2023 attack.

President Donald Trump denounced the Nobel decision and said the committee had discredited the prize. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the committee of losing its moral compass. Pillay has rejected claims that her work is antisemitic and said after the award that attempts to weaken international criminal justice risk returning the world to a system in which power decides whose suffering matters.

Hours after the award, the Trump administration announced institutional sanctions against the International Criminal Court, expanding a long-running dispute over investigations involving Americans and Israelis. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the court politicized and said the measures would block assets under U.S. jurisdiction and require American companies and individuals to wind down business with it.

The peace prize, worth 12 million Swedish kronor, will be presented in Oslo on December 10. The award marks the 125th anniversary of the prize's first presentation.

A prize for law does not settle the argument

Pillay's life deserves recognition. She challenged apartheid when doing so carried personal danger, helped build accountability after the Rwandan genocide and spent decades arguing that officials should not escape judgment because they possess armies or offices. Democracies benefit when law restrains arbitrary power.

Yet the Nobel committee's decision cannot convert every finding associated with its laureate into an uncontested fact. The genocide allegation against Israel remains intensely disputed. The commission reached its conclusion; Israel denies it; and international legal proceedings require evidence, procedure and final judgments rather than moral certainty by announcement.

That distinction matters because international institutions lose authority when supporters treat criticism as illegitimate or when opponents try to disable the institutions entirely. Courts that overreach can become political actors. Governments that sanction a court wholesale because they dislike its scrutiny can also make power appear superior to law.

The American position should demand standards that are consistent: protection for civilians, accountability for Hamas atrocities, scrutiny of Israeli military conduct and due process for every accused party. Supporting an ally does not require accepting every institutional claim, but rejecting a claim does not justify abandoning the idea of international accountability.

The Nobel Peace Prize is therefore less a verdict on today's wars than a challenge to all sides. Pillay's record shows why legal institutions exist; the backlash shows why they remain fragile. The hard test is whether they can apply rules impartially when the accused are powerful, the victims are politically inconvenient and public opinion has already chosen a side.

The darker alternative is familiar from history: law becomes a weapon used only against enemies, while allies and victors remain beyond reach. Nuremberg's lesson was not that judges are always right. It was that raw power must answer to evidence and rules. Preserving that principle requires courage from courts and restraint from the governments judging them.