Israel a rare dissenting voice as praise pours in for Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay
France 24 · LC · trust 61/100
Advocates of human rights and international justice cheered, even as Israeli officials fumed, after South African jurist and former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The 85-year-old drew wide praise for decades of work, including investigating crimes in Rwanda, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
By: FRANCE 24 To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.
One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site.
Her win signals a high-profile rebuke to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , who have both rejected the findings of the UN commission she led on Gaza. The leaders also have been highly critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; Pillay has worked at both.
Pillay’s work “is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world”, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing her win in Oslo, Norway, as part of the peace prize’s 125th anniversary.
The committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict, and Watne Frydnes said Pillay’s award was a message to those seeking to undermine “the international rules-based system and the institutions”.
To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.
One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site.
“Perhaps it was meant to be that I was in this historic Courtroom 600” of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, she said.
She said efforts to weaken international criminal justice “endanger the progress painstakingly made since Nuremberg, and they risk returning us to a world in which power, rather than law, determines whose suffering matters”.
World leaders, she added, have a “legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war”.
Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel , which was created by the UN-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
Read more Israel is committing 'genocide' in Gaza, UN investigators say
Gaza was among Pillay’s first comments Friday after hearing she had won. “What’s happening there is genocide,” she said in Germany, to more applause.
The commission last year also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defence minister "have incited the commission of genocide”. Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the accusations.
Pillay has repeatedly rebuffed critics who accused her of anti-Semitism or turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel. Under her leadership, the commission also issued reports accusing Hamas of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
A senior Hamas official, Bassem Naim, in a statement Friday called the Nobel for Pillay a message of hope for Palestinians, especially in Gaza, that “humanity still resists the forces of evil targeting international justice”.
The Israeli foreign ministry, meanwhile, said in a statement that “if there were an award for lies, hatred, and blood libels, Navi Pillay wouldn’t just be a contender. She’d be a frontrunner”.
The ministry added on X that the award “isn’t a recognition of justice. It’s the grotesque weaponization of an award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice”.
It was a rare dissenting voice amid a chorus of praise for Pillay and the Nobel Committee’s choice, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said honoured those who fight to defend international law and human rights.
“For decades, she has been a champion of international law and human rights, and a steadfast, independent voice of justice amidst some of the most historic international legal cases of our time,” Guterres said about Pillay, a former UN rights chief.
“Today's prize is a tribute to all those working to uphold and defend international law, the rule of law and human rights, and secure peace, justice and human dignity,” he said in a statement.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, one of Pillay's successors in that post, hailed a “particularly poignant” award “at a time when human rights are under attack on so many fronts, including from those who wield enormous power”.
He added: “It is an award to all those who, around the world, dedicate their lives to the defence of human rights — often at great risk to their security.”
To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.
One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa celebrated the “contributions (Pillay) has made to strengthen peace, uphold human dignity and bring hope in South Africa and to peoples globally”.
There was praise, too, from rights groups, including Human Rights Watch chief Philippe Bolopion, who hailed her “profound influence in South Africa, Rwanda, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and as leader of the UN’s human rights”. Bolopion added: “At a time when international justice is under threat from rights-rejecting leaders, she has been a stalwart proponent of the international rule of law and impartial human rights work.”
Pillay's win brings renewed attention to Trump’s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court, where she served as a judge from 2003 to 2008. The Trump administration already has sanctioned 13 of the ICC’s staff members, among…
Read the original at France 24 →
Open in TruthVane →