By Enyichukwu Enemanna
A South African-born judge who headed the Rwanda genocide tribunal and presided over a UN commission which accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, was on Friday awarded Nobel Peace Prize.
Navi Pillay, 85 who is currently a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case in which Myanmar also stands accused of genocide, has spent her career defending international law.
She dedicated her award to the “survivors of international crimes”, she said while speaking on Friday from the courtroom in Nuremberg, Germany where the trials prosecuting World War II Nazi leaders took place.
Pillay has been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted,” Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo said.
Israel’s foreign ministry said the award legitimised “anti-Israel hatred”, and that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels must be “applauding from hell”.
The daughter of a bus driver in a family of Tamil descent, Pillay’s career has taken her from South African courts, where she defended anti-apartheid activists, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
She headed the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the world body, and which last year found that genocide was occurring in Gaza.
Pillay told AFP at the time that her team had shared “thousands of pieces of information” with prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.
Israel had categorically rejected the report’s findings, slamming it 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.
In Nuremberg, Pillay said world leaders have a “legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war”, and criticised attacks on the ICC.
“We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack,” she said.
“This worsening reality is particularly visible with the attacks on the International Criminal Court,” she continued.
US President Donald Trump last month called for all ICC member states to quit the body, denouncing it as a “rogue institution”.
Earlier, she reacted to the news about her prize by making a quip about Trump’s well-documented desire to win the prize himself.
“If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” Pillay said earlier during a standing ovation captured on video by Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard in Nuremberg and posted on the social network X.
