A Nobel Peace Prize for a female defender of human rights

THE awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African jurist and former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge Navi Pillay for her lifelong efforts to promote peace, international law and human rights has been greeted with great praise. She welcomed the honor but said it was a “lonely” award, since promoting human rights and social justice was the collective work of many dedicated human rights workers and activists, as well as others equally committed to them. She did not see it as a personal award, but as a recognition of the international community of rights workers, of which she is a part.

Pillay was the first nonwhite woman to open a law practice in Natal, South Africa, in 1967. She spent decades defending anti-apartheid activists, political prisoners, and Robben Island detainees. One of them was Nelson Mandela, who became the country’s president a few years after he was released from prison. He appointed Pillay as the first nonwhite woman to join the South African High Court.

She later became a judge on — and president of — the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she helped establish landmark legal precedents, including recognizing rape and its incitement as instruments of genocide. She was also a judge on the International Court of Justice and served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. She led UN inquiries and commissions looking into human rights violations and conflicts, including leading a UN Human Rights Council commission that investigated the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Pillay was at a conference inside Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg, Germany, when she learned she won the Nobel Peace Prize. That courtroom was where Nazi war criminals were put on trial for committing genocide against the Jews. Keeping that in mind, it is now shocking that allegations of genocide have been made against Israel decades later. Many of the Jews who survived the Holocaust later migrated to Palestine and established the State of Israel there, displacing Palestinians and committing violence against them, as well as triggering a conflict that continues to this day.

In November 2024, the ICC pre-trial chamber issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant. Both face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They allegedly used starvation as a tool of warfare, murder, persecution and intentionally directing attacks against civilians. The warrants aim to bring them to trial and answer those allegations. The two are not charged with genocide, but the State of Israel is.

Netanyahu’s ally, United States President Donald Trump, was angry at the ICC over the warrants and imposed sanctions on several of its judges and prosecutors. He also fears possible investigations of his own illegal actions, like ordering the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug smugglers in Caribbean waters. He was enraged when the ICC opened an investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Afghanistan by US troops.

Ongoing atrocities

Meanwhile, the killing of Palestinian civilians continues in Gaza and now in the West Bank. South Africa has brought a case against Israel under the 1948 Genocide Convention. Pillay was a leading adviser in that case, and that definitely does not put her in Israel’s graces. The final results of Israel’s parliamentary elections last week showed that no single party or bloc won an outright majority, and a coalition government has to be formed. Many Arab Israelis elected 18 candidates to the legislature, but it’s certain other political parties will not include them in forming a government.

Trump was enraged when he learned that a highly regarded and globally recognized woman of color from South Africa won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which he has long coveted. He has said he deserves it for stopping so many wars, ignoring the fact that he actually started one with Iran in late February. He was reported as saying that Pillay was of no importance and unheard of. He said her selection was disgraceful and embarrassing and an “indelible stain on Norway.”

After the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, Trump announced new sanctions on the ICC through his Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He moved to lock down the court’s assets in the US. Financial dealings with the court were ordered to stop, and US companies providing informational technology services were ordered to cut them, among other measures. These were, no doubt, driven by intense jealousy. Trump also accused the ICC of being a “rogue” institution with double standards.

The Preda Foundation, through its founder, was nominated on four separate occasions for the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in rescuing, protecting and healing over a thousand child-abuse and human-trafficking victims, but was never awarded it for the children and their protectors and healers. The children are healed and empowered to testify in court and win as many as 20 convictions of their abusers every year. When the nomination was proposed to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Chairman Thorbjørn Jagland turned it down. He was a former prime minister of Norway and is facing charges of aggravated gross corruption in that country regarding his close relationship with the late US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who invited powerful people like Jagland to share his pleasures in his private resorts in Miami, New York and elsewhere where children were sexually abused.

Underage girls were always available in Epstein’s resorts to provide companionship for his guests. Trump was a close associate of Epstein, and photographs released to the media show them laughing together. Jagland frequented Epstein’s property in New York and Florida, as did the United Kingdom’s former prince Andrew, who was photographed then with a minor who later accused him of abuse.

Jagland likely approved and protected Epstein’s dirty business of child sexual abuse and trafficking. It is no wonder, then, that any nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for an organization like the Preda Foundation that exposes child abusers and brings them to justice would be rejected by the committee on his decision as chairman. Epstein is now dead. Allegedly, he killed himself in jail while awaiting trial in New York, and Jagland himself is on trial for gross corruption related to financial misconduct and misusing his public positions.

There are allegations that Trump was compromised by Israel, which may have caught him in a “honey trap” when he and Epstein were still close friends. This was likely set up by Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service that is well-known for such tactics. Epstein had traveled several times to Israel. Whatever wrongdoing these powerful people allegedly committed, the truth behind it is being gradually revealed, and the good defenders of human rights are being recognized through the Nobel Peace Prize, which is its intended purpose.

www.preda.org