Nobel Peace Prize 2026 awarded to Navanethem

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 was awarded Friday to Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, a South African-born former judge with the International Criminal Court who went on to become the United Nations human rights chief.

The South African-born former United Nations human rights chief, who is 85, was recognized for her efforts to promote peace and international law, said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

"The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack," he said, noting what the committee saw as a shift "towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice."

The ICC condemned the U.S. sanctions against its staff and said they were intended to "harm (the Court's) independent and impartial judicial work."

Pillay served as an ICC judge from 2003 until 2008, when she resigned to take on the role of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was the chair of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that said last year it had concluded Israel's actions in Gaza amounted to genocide. Israel dismissed the report as "scandalous."

Pillay is currently serving as a judge with the U.N.'s International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is separate and independent of the ICC, in the case of Gambia v. Myanmar, in which Myanmar's ruling military junta stands accused of genocide charges over its treatment of the nation's Rohingya Muslim minority in the western state of Rakhine.

The award is often considered the most prestigious honor on the planet. This year marks the 125th anniversary of the peace prize.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee had received nominations this year for 287 candidates for this year's prize, and just over a quarter of them were organizations.

Machado gave President Trump, who has long said he deserves the prize, her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: The Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.

Four of this year's Nobels were announced earlier this week. The Nobel for medicine went to three scientists whose work led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works. The physics award recognized a scientist's efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos. The chemistry prize recognized two scientists for untangling mysterious mirror images in molecules, a discovery that has been used to develop countless drugs.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).