Navi Pillay speaking at a symposium on international criminal justice in Cape Town in August 2018. Photograph: Wayamo Foundation / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, the South African jurist of Tamil descent who as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights pressed for an international investigation into the massacre of Tamils at Mullivaikkal, has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced in Oslo on Friday that Pillay, 85, had been chosen "for her efforts to promote peace and international law", describing her as a person who "with exceptional courage and integrity has led the way towards a more comprehensive global legal order".
"This year's laureate has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted," the committee said.
"Navi Pillay has held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict."
Pillay called for an international investigation into the killing of civilians within days of the end of the armed conflict in 2009, travelled to the North-East in 2013 despite a campaign of abuse over her Tamil ancestry, and set up the UN investigation that in 2015 found reasonable grounds to believe war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed.
After leaving the UN, she continued to speak at Tamil remembrance events and to call for prosecutions.
Pillay was born Navanethem Naidoo in Durban in 1941 into a family of Indian Tamil origin living under apartheid. In 1967 she became the first non-white woman to open a law practice in Natal. She defended anti-apartheid activists and, in 1973, won the right of political prisoners on Robben Island, including Nelson Mandela, to have access to lawyers.
The Nobel Committee said that "a common thread runs from her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time".
In 1995, she became the first non-white woman appointed to the High Court of South Africa, but left the same year to join the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which she later led as president. The tribunal's 1998 judgment against Jean-Paul Akayesu was the first to find that rape and sexual violence could constitute genocide, a ruling in which, the committee said, "her influence was a significant factor".
She went on to serve as a judge of the International Criminal Court from 2003 to 2008, before becoming UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in September 2008, as the Sri Lankan military's final offensive was gathering pace.
Pillay during a visit to Brazil as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in November 2009. Photograph: Antônio Cruz / Agência Brasil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 BR
On 26 May 2009, a week after the Sri Lankan government declared victory, the UN Human Rights Council held a special session on Sri Lanka. Addressing it by video, Pillay said there were strong reasons to believe that both sides had "grossly disregarded the fundamental principle of the inviolability of civilians", and called for "an independent and credible international investigation", according to the UN's own record .
The Council rejected her call. Instead, by 29 votes to 12, it adopted a resolution put forward by Sri Lanka and its allies that commended the government. A UN panel of experts would later estimate that as many as 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the war, most of them by government shelling.
Pillay did not drop the issue. In October 2009 she told reporters in Brussels that the government was "resisting" calls for an investigation .
"They do not have a very good record in holding serious investigations," she said.
'The fighting is over, but the suffering is not'
In August 2013, Pillay became the first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Sri Lanka since the end of the war. Over seven days, she travelled to Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Trincomalee, and met families of the disappeared and people living among the ruins along the lagoon in Mullaitivu.
Pillay is garlanded on arrival at Jaffna Public Library on 27 August 2013. File photograph: Northern Provincial administration / np.gov.lk
Inside the library, Northern Province officials gave her a lavish welcome and briefed her on resettlement, rehabilitation and development since 2009.
Northern Province officials welcome Pillay at Jaffna Public Library on 27 August 2013. File photograph: Northern Provincial administration / np.gov.lk
Outside, hundreds of families of the disappeared gathered with photographs of their missing relatives and placards calling for their land to be returned. They were kept back by Sri Lankan police , and Pillay was taken out through a back door .
Sri Lankan police stand guard as families of the disappeared wait outside Jaffna Public Library on 27 August 2013. Photograph: TamilNet
Families of the disappeared hold photographs of their relatives outside Jaffna Public Library during Pillay's visit on 27 August 2013. Photograph: TamilNet
At a press conference in Colombo at the end of the visit, Pillay delivered one of the strongest statements on Sri Lanka ever made by a UN official.
"It is important everyone realises that, although the fighting is over, the suffering is not," she said. Wounds would not heal, she said, "without respect for those who grieve, and remembrance for the tens of thousands of Tamils, Sinhalese, Muslims and others who died".
She said the military appeared to be "putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be civilian activities, for instance, education, agriculture and even tourism", and that the presence of soldiers in the community seemed "much greater than is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes, four years after the end of the war". She also suggested that it might be time to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Families of the disappeared hold up photographs of their missing relatives, watched by Sri Lankan police, outside Jaffna Public Library on 27 August 2013. Photograph: TamilNet
She described the treatment of people she had met as "a disturbing aspect of the visit".
"I have received reports that people in villages and settlements in the Mullaitivu area were visited by police or military officers, both before and after I arrived there. In Trincomalee, several people I met were subsequently questioned about the content of our conversation."
A relative of one of the disappeared breaks down outside Jaffna Public Library after families were unable to meet Pillay on 27 August 2013. Photograph: TamilNet
Two priests who met her in Trincomalee were harassed afterwards , according to the TNA. The government denied that any threats had been made.
"I am deeply concerned that Sri Lanka, despite the opportunity provided by the end of the war to construct a new vibrant, all-embracing State, is showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction," she said .
The government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is accused of overseeing war crimes and genocide against Tamils, met the visit with hostility. Before she had published a word, the housing minister Wimal Weerawansa declared that "she is not going to submit a fair report", accusing her of approaching the visit with her mind already made up.
Buddhist monks of the Ravana Balaya hold a banner reading "Let us condemn Pillai’s anti-Sri Lankan visit" outside the UN compound in Colombo on 26 August 2013. Photograph: Azzam Ameen / dbsjeyaraj.com
Ministers and commentators repeatedly invoked her ancestry. In Colombo, Pillay said that for several years "media, ministers, bloggers and various propagandists" in Sri Lanka had, "on the basis of my Indian Tamil heritage", described her as a tool of the LTTE, in their pay and the "Tamil Tigress in the UN". This was "not only wildly incorrect, it is deeply offensive", she said, adding that at least three ministers had joined in during the week of her visit.
"Firstly, let me say, I am a South African and proud of it," she said. She went on to note that her only previous visit to Sri Lanka had been to attend a commemoration of Neelan Tiruchelvam, who was killed in 1999.
During the same week, the public relations minister Mervyn Silva publicly offered to marry her. He refused to apologise. Another minister, Dullas Alahapperuma, later expressed regret on behalf of the cabinet , saying "this is just wrong". Sinhala Buddhist nationalist groups, including monks, demonstrated against her visit , and in March 2014 protesters in Colombo and Trincomalee burned effigies of Pillay and Barack Obama.
On International Women’s Day that month, hundreds of women from the Sinhala group Lakmawa Diyaniyo marched to the US embassy in Colombo, where they smeared a photograph of Pillay with blood , threw it to the ground, stamped on it and hit it with their shoes.
A photograph of Pillay smeared with blood during the Lakmawa Diyaniyo protest in Colombo on 7 March 2014. File photograph: Tamil Guardian
Pillay's approach was not without critics among Tamils. Some activists were frustrated that she continued to place weight on the government's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, which she had welcomed as "an important step" even though, she said, it "sidestepped the much-needed full, transparent, impartial investigation" into the war.
In September 2013, Pillay told the Human Rights Council she had received information that military checkpoints in the North had been removed just before her arrival and reinstated after she left. She gave Colombo until March 2014 "to show a credible national process with tangible results", warning that otherwise "the international community will have a duty to establish its own inquiry mechanisms ".
No such process appeared. In February 2014, her office's report to the Council recommended "the establishment of an independent international inquiry mechanism", saying that "the international community has a duty to take further steps" . The Tamil National Alliance welcomed the report and endorsed her recommendation.
The Sri Lankan foreign minister G.L. Peiris rejected the report "in its entirety" , calling it "fundamentally flawed" and accusing Pillay of reaching her conclusions in a "selective and arbitrary manner".
The plantations minister Mahinda Samarasinghe called her a liar at an election rally.
Pillay addresses a special session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in August 2011. Photograph: United States Mission Geneva / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
On 27 March 2014, the Council adopted resolution 25/1 by 23 votes to 12, with 12 abstentions, mandating her office to investigate alleged serious violations and abuses by both parties. Pillay pressed ahead despite Sri Lanka's refusal to cooperate, appointing three experts to advise it: the former Finnish president and Nobel laureate Martti Ahtisaari, the former New Zealand governor-general Dame Silvia Cartwright and the Pakistani human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir.
Sri Lankan police guard the UN compound in Colombo as Buddhist monks protest against the draft UN resolution calling for an international investigation, March 2014. File photograph: Foreign Correspondents of Sri Lanka
In August 2014, the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka opened its call for submissions from victims and witnesses. Thirty-three members of the Northern and Eastern Provincial Councils wrote to her office asking it to examine whether genocide had been committed against Tamils.
Days before her term ended, Pillay told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that the attacks from Colombo did not disturb her .
"I am supremely confident that I speak with moral authority," she said.
The investigation she had set up reported in September 2015 , a year after she left office. It found reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed, including unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture and sexual violence, and recommended a hybrid special court with international judges, prosecutors and investigators. Sri Lanka co-sponsored resolution 30/1 that October, committing to a judicial mechanism with foreign participation. Successive governments never established it.
Out of office, Pillay spoke more directly. Days after the investigation's report was published, she told India's Thanthi TV that a court would have to decide whether "there was a deliberate intention to destroy for instance the Tamil population", but that reports of sexual violence against Tamil women and girls appeared to be "systematic and intentional to destroy the Tamil group". She said India could have helped prevent the deaths of almost 40,000 people, and criticised India and South Africa for treating the killings as "internal matters".
"There can never be immunity for these very serious crimes," she said .
In March 2019, as the government sought more time to implement resolution 30/1, she accused it of "resorting to yet another delaying tactic" .
On 19 May 2020, the eleventh anniversary of the end of the war, Pillay issued a Mullivaikkal remembrance statement .
"I join in remembrance of the Tamil victims of the war that ended on the 18 May 2009," she said, noting that close to 146,000 Tamils had died "across the six decades struggle for self-determination".
"It is important that we honour the Tamil victims and we inspire ourselves to continue their struggle for justice, freedoms and reparation."
Two months earlier, the Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who as defence secretary is accused of overseeing war crimes and genocide against Tamils, had pardoned Sunil Ratnayake, a soldier sentenced to death for the Mirusuvil massacre of eight Tamil civilians, including a five-year-old child. Pillay called it "a cynical move" and "a far cry from justice". She noted that land "stolen" by the military had not been returned, that almost 200 people remained in detention, and that Tamil had been excluded from the singing of the national anthem.
"All of us should join the international community in collective action to realise the rights of Tamils people," she said.
In February 2021, she joined former UN officials and international experts in calling for Sri Lanka to be referred to the International Criminal Court and for universal jurisdiction cases and targeted sanctions. Sri Lanka, she said, had "failed to make any meaningful progress towards accountability for international crimes" . The following month, at a conference on the loss of the Tamil homeland, she said that the "right to self-determination and to freedom of movement may be violated" when communities are kept from their land, and that she hoped what happened in Sri Lanka "will be tested in the criminal jurisdiction, whether it's the International Criminal Court or hybrid court" .
Pillay speaks by video at the "Loss of the Tamil homeland" conference in March 2021. File image: Tamil Guardian
From 2021, Pillay chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which in September 2025 concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza , a finding Israel rejected. She also sits as a judge ad hoc at the International Court of Justice, appointed by The Gambia, in the case accusing Myanmar of genocide against the Rohingya. In 2025, she received the Sydney Peace Prize , and in January 2026 she was named joint winner of the Olof Palme Prize with the South African jurist John Dugard.
The Nobel Committee said that international law and its institutions were "under tremendous pressure", and that "cases brought under international law have produced different results depending on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim".
Seventeen years after Pillay first called for an international investigation, no Sri Lankan military or political figure has been prosecuted for atrocities committed against Tamils in the final stages of the war. In October 2025, the Human Rights Council extended for two years the mandate of the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, the evidence-gathering unit created in 2021. The government of the Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake rejects it, and its foreign minister Vijitha Herath has said that "we absolutely do not accept that a genocide took place in our country". His address to the UN General Assembly last month made no mention of accountability .
Pillay will receive the prize in Oslo on 10 December.
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