Harvard Law Graduate Navi Pillay Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Navanetham “Navi” Pillay — a Harvard Law School alum, international jurist, and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights — was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee announced Friday.

Pillay, who earned her LL.M. in 1982 and S.J.D. in 1988 from the Law School, was recognized for her “efforts to promote peace and international law.” She is the second Harvard graduate to win a Nobel Prize this year, after Stanford University professor Karl A. Deisseroth ’92 was one of three scientists awarded the prize in physiology or medicine last Monday.

Pillay attended HLS through the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program, a fully-funded fellowship for mid-career South African professionals who were educationally disadvantaged under apartheid. Before coming to HLS, she spent more than a decade defending anti-Apartheid activists.

She became the first non-white woman to serve on the High Court of South Africa in 1995, when she was appointed by then-President Nelson Mandela.

Her doctoral thesis examined the viability of justice in South Africa during a time of the politicization of its court system, and she returned to HLS in 2022 to discuss the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

HLS human rights professor Susan H. Farbstein, who moderated the 2022 conversation, wrote in a statement that she was “thrilled” Pillay received the award.

“She’s a giant in the field of international law and human rights, whose career has had a profound impact in building the modern international legal system,” Farbstein wrote. “This award is also a reminder that even the world’s most powerful actors must be held accountable when they violate fundamental rights.”

Farbstein also wrote that Pillay “grew up in one of the world’s most oppressive legal systems, where the law itself mandated that the color of her skin would deprive her of her basic rights.”

“Even after she became a practicing attorney defending prominent anti-apartheid activists against government oppression, she still had to use the ‘colored’ courthouse entrance and sit separately from the white lawyers,” Farbstein added.

But her term on the court was brief, as the UN General Assembly appointed her to the International Tribunal for Rwanda in the same year as her court appointment. Pillay served in the seat for eight years and presided over a trial that established rape and sexual assault could constitute acts of genocide.

Pillay was one of the first judges to serve on the International Criminal Court after it was formed in 2002, before former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — a Harvard Kennedy School graduate — to serve as High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.

Pillay’s work was also recognized at Harvard. In 2015, HKS awarded her the Richard E. Neustadt award — presented by former Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf for “creating powerful solutions to public problems.” She received a $25,000 prize, with funding support from former Harvard Corporation member and Carlyle Group founder David M. Rubenstein.

Since 2019, Pillay has served as a judge on the International Court of Justice, overseeing the case where The Gambia has accused Myanmar of genocide for its treatment of the Rohingya ethnic group.

HLS professor Alex Whiting, a former ICC prosecutor, said Pillay’s award was “timely” and underscored the importance of international criminal law amid pressure from President Trump’s administration — pointing to recent sanctions against members of the court and ICC itself.

The ICC has faced a host of attacks from the White House for more than a year, when the U.S. imposed sanctions against 17 of the court’s judges and officials for engaging “in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.” And hours after Pillay’s award was announced, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States would impose sanctions against the ICC, barring the court from using U.S.-based technology and financial resources.

Rubio previously said in July that the U.S. hoped to “systematically disable” the court.

But Whiting argued that Pillay’s award “should be a reminder to other countries in the world just how important international law is and international criminal law is.”

“The International Criminal Court will survive this attack by the United States because the countries that support it around the world will come to its defense, and that is essential,” Whiting said.

“It will only survive if the other countries support it, and I think they will,” he added. “What the Nobel Peace Prize says to those countries is, you have to step up to protect the rule of law internationally.”

—Staff writer Uy B. Pham can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ubp.88. Follow him on X @uybpham.