The Nobel Committee awarded Judge Pillay for her pioneering work in international justice, specifically her role in establishing the legal precedent that rape constitutes a crime against humanity and an act of genocide, and for her relentless pursuit of accountability for the world’s most vulnerable.
Judge Pillay’s career is a testament to courage. As a young attorney in South Africa, she was the first woman to start a law practice in Natal Province in 1967 . During the apartheid era, she spent decades defending anti-apartheid activists and political prisoners, famously securing the rights of detainees on Robben Island—including Nelson Mandela—to have access to lawyers and reading materials .
Following the end of apartheid, Judge Pillay became the first non-white woman appointed to the South African High Court in 1995 . Her impact on global jurisprudence came next at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where she served as President. In the landmark Akayesu case, she helped establish that sexual violence could be prosecuted as genocide—a ruling that fundamentally transformed international humanitarian law .
She later served as a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014 . Even in her later years, she continued to demand accountability, most recently serving as Chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, where she reported findings that Israel had committed genocidal acts in Gaza .
This Nobel Prize affirms that the pursuit of justice, no matter how difficult, is the only foundation for lasting peace.
