Navi Pillay has spent a lifetime asking the world’s most powerful institutions to answer hard questions, and she is not stopping. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, honoured on 9 October, is now demanding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stand trial for genocide in Gaza, and that Israeli President Isaac Herzog and former defence minister Yoav Gallant face investigation and prosecution over the same allegations.
Her demand, set out in an interview published by the Spanish newspaper El País on Tuesday, goes further than anything the international legal system has so far produced. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, but those warrants carry no genocide charges. Pillay wants the gravest label in international law attached to the case.
She speaks from a position of authority earned over decades. The United Nations commission she chaired concluded in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, finding that four of the five genocidal acts defined under the Genocide Convention had been committed. The commission also found evidence of genocidal intent, drawing on statements by senior Israeli officials and the conduct of Israeli forces, including widespread destruction, forced displacement and restrictions on humanitarian assistance. For the people of Gaza, those findings describe the daily reality of a war that has flattened neighbourhoods and cut off aid.
Israel has rejected those findings outright, accusing investigators of bias and maintaining that its military campaign was directed against Hamas after the attacks of 7 October 2023. Pillay refuses to accept the accusation that the conclusions were politically motivated. “We have not included a single piece of evidence that was not personally verified,” she told El País, according to a translation of the Spanish-language interview. Her message to critics is blunt: address the evidence rather than attempt to discredit the people who gathered it.
The Nobel Prize has drawn congratulations from across the world and from every corner of South African public life. UN secretary-general António Guterres called her a champion of international law and human rights, saying she had demonstrated that the force of law must prevail over the law of force. African Union Commission chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf welcomed the award and recognised her contribution to international justice and human dignity.
At home, President Cyril Ramaphosa, parliament, the department of international relations and cooperation, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi and the South African Human Rights Commission all congratulated her. Dirco praised her independence, courage and lifelong commitment to accountability, pointing to her work against apartheid, her contribution to the prosecution of genocide in Rwanda and her leadership of the UN commission investigating violations in Gaza. The department described her work as an important contribution to international law at a time when the institutions responsible for upholding it were under increasing attack. Human Rights Watch echoed that praise, with executive director Philippe Bolopion citing her contribution to human rights and international justice in South Africa, Rwanda and the occupied Palestinian territory. ICC president Tomoko Akane described the award as recognition of the importance of international justice to lasting peace.
That recognition has come with a cost. Israel’s foreign ministry accused Pillay of promoting anti-Israel prejudice following the Nobel announcement and rejected the findings of her commission. Domestically, Democratic Alliance leader Geordin Hill-Lewis has described aspects of her recent work as divisive. In an interview with Voice of the Cape on 13 October, he was questioned about the party’s silence after the prize and about its electoral support in predominantly Muslim areas of Cape Town, where its position on Palestine has been raised as a concern among voters.
Hill-Lewis defended the DA’s support for a two-state solution and condemned Israeli settlement expansion as incompatible with lasting peace. But on the central question he would not be drawn. “That is a legal term. It is not a political term. It is not a term of debate or opinion,” he said of genocide, insisting the determination should be left to the International Court of Justice, which is separately considering South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention. That court has ordered provisional measures but has not delivered a final judgment. Hill-Lewis did offer a personal congratulation, calling the prize “a remarkable achievement for the judge and I have no doubt that it’s a very special thing for her and indeed for our country,” while adding that some of her recent work is “much more divisive” and that the party preferred to focus on uniting South Africans.
Pillay’s standing rests on a career that runs from opposing apartheid to some of the most significant proceedings in international criminal law. As president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda she participated in the landmark Akayesu judgment, which established that rape and sexual violence could constitute acts of genocide. She later served as a judge at the ICC and as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Her latest call for accountability lands at a precarious moment for the court she is asking to act. The ICC is facing sweeping sanctions imposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump. On 9 October, Washington imposed sanctions directly on the court as an institution, following earlier measures targeting individual judges and prosecutors. The ICC rejected the sanctions as an attempt to undermine its independence and obstruct its work. Pillay criticised them in an interview with Reuters on 13 October, called on the United States to return to its traditional role as a defender of human rights, and visited the court in The Hague to express solidarity with its staff, praising their commitment despite the pressure. European governments are considering measures to protect the court and the companies providing it with essential services, though no new protective mechanism has been activated.
For now, the ICC’s warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant remain in force, South Africa’s genocide case continues before the ICJ, and Pillay is pressing for all of it to go further. Whether the courts can deliver accountability while under sanctions themselves is the question her prize has now placed before the world.