Jackson Center keynote speaker earns Nobel Peace Prize
Jackson Center keynote speaker earns Nobel Peace Prize
Trending
The 2026 International Nobel Peace Prize winner has a long legal record – including a 2019 keynote address at Chautauqua Institution during the 13th annual International Humanitarian Law Roundtable hosted by the Robert H. Jackson Center.
Last week, Navi Pillay was announced as a recipient of the 2026 International Nobel Peace Prize. During her visit to Jamestown, Pillay visited the Robert H. Jackson Center and was interviewed by local attorney Greg Peterson.
"This is amazing that a visitor to our area and guest speaker for the IHLR earned the Nobel Peace Prize," Peterson said. "She is humble, intelligent, and has a passion for human rights."
Pillay, a South African jurist, has served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014; presented a legal defense against apartheid in her home country; served with the International Court of Justice; became a judge on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR); In 1992, she co-founded the international women’s rights group Equality Now in New York, along with two other human rights lawyers, Jessica Neuwirth, and Feryal Gharahi; Pillay made history as the first non-white woman on South Africa’s High Court, defended Nelson Mandela during apartheid trials; Pillay is president of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty (ICADP), based in Madrid, Spain; president of the Advisory Council of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy; and the chair of the Quasi-Judicial Inquiry into Detention in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Peterson said Pillay received notice of her Nobel Peace Prize award in Courtroom 600 inside the Palace of Justice (Justizpalast) in Nuremberg, Germany, a site famous worldwide for the post-World War II Nuremberg trials.
"This is the same courtroom where Justice Jackson gave the opening and closing statements and prosecuted Nazi war criminals," he said. "It's a thing of serendipity."
On the 125th anniversary of the prize's inception, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sought "to remind the world that the rule of law, national and international, underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts nonviolently. Peace requires justice," committee Chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes said, according to an Associated Press report.
"To be honored for that kind of work is tremendous, not only for me, but for all my colleagues," Pillay said to the Associated Press.
Pillay's win is seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of the U.N. commission she led on Gaza. The leaders also have been highly critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, both of which have had Pillay on the bench.
Pillay had sharp words for Trump, who has coveted the peace prize for years, calling Washington's attacks on the International Criminal Court "completely unlawful" as well as "negative and cruel."
Hours after the announcement of her award was made in Oslo, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sweeping new sanctions on the ICC, where Pillay once sat as a judge, as part of a campaign to dismantle the institution.
Pillay had sharp words for Trump, who has coveted the peace prize for years, calling Washington's attacks on the International Criminal Court "completely unlawful" as well as "negative and cruel."
"Heads of countries have a particular responsibility to spell out the principles, which is that you respect the law, you respect international law," she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.