Navi Pillay’s decades-long fight for justice and accountability makes her a compelling choice for peace. (Image: X)

Handpicked by Nelson Mandela to be the first non-white judge to serve in the High Court of South Africa, the lawyer and jurist of Indian origin who is a granddaughter of indentured workers who moved from Tamil Nadu to Durban in South Africa, Navanethem ‘Navi’ Pillay becomes a most interesting choice to be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize of 2026.

Her decades of legal work which also served to define the long march to freedom of the non-white people of her country, were followed by a relentless fight for preserving international human rights law with a focus on crimes of rape and sexual violence against women and children. That makes her a great pick in these fractured times when the world is on edge thanks to the on-off Iran war.

Currently a judge on the International Court of Justice, Ms Pillay, whose work to keep international law relevant in a conflicted world is seen as a “source of hope and inspiration for all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world”.

The UN panel she led determined gutsily that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. While the jury may be still out on that sweeping conclusion, the bravery in calling out aggression, or disproportionately fierce response to the Hamas attack as in the case of Israel, has become necessary in a world of endless wars.

The Nobel committee’s chosen personality for the coveted Peace Prize is the diametrical opposite of succumbing to the pressures that the US President Donald Trump put on the committee, recommending himself unabashedly for the honour like a stuck vinyl record. That he ordered the bombing of Iran’s nuclear energy assets in 2025 and then a full-scale aerial war against that nation in 2026 makes him a candidate least suited to the privilege of being named a peacemaker.

At a time when the US President seems to be taking on India at every turn while professing great friendship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the situational irony of an Indian origin person landing the grand prize makes for the kind Greek philosophers may have grappled with. It may even have riled the committee that its last year’s pick, the Venezuelan Opposition leader María Corina Machado handed her Nobel medal to Mr Trump at the Oval Office. The 2026 medal will be in good hands soon.

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