The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the South African jurist who led the United Nations commission of inquiry that concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Pillay’s long career in international human rights law includes work as a defense attorney for anti-apartheid activists, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a former judge at the International Criminal Court and the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights from 2008 to 2014.
“Everybody in the human rights movement reveres Navi Pillay,” says war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody, who calls the award “a stinging rebuke to Donald Trump.” Brody, a member of the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, also comments on the Trump administration’s decision to deport a Nicaraguan opposition activist, Jeffrey Jarquín, from the United States, where he was in the process of seeking asylum. Upon his return to Nicaragua, Jarquín was immediately imprisoned at the same facility in which he was once tortured.
