The Norwegian Nobel committee has spoken and once again named a most worthy personage as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. Their choice is Navanethem (Navi) Pillay, a South African jurist who they acclaimed as “one of the great defenders of international legal principles.”
Ms. Pillay easily lives up to that compliment. Born in Durban to poor parents, after attending segregated school and university, she became the first woman to start a law practice in Natal and the first non-white woman to serve on South Africa’s High Court. In South Africa she worked for decades on human rights issues, defending anti-apartheid activists including fellow Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela.
She has also served as the UN high commissioner for human rights, a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC), and on a tribunal investigating genocide in Rwanda. She is currently a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s main judicial body.
She recently served as chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that concluded Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
Who better, we might ask, to represent the global search for peace in these troubled times when the international order is under threat, than a jurist. A “great defender of international legal principles” has met her moment.
The Nobel committee chair, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, called the award “a message to those who are attacking” international law. He didn’t mention that the United States is prominent among those attackers. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has threatened to dismantle the ICC brick by brick and announced sweeping new sanctions against the Court. (I have posted previously about U.S. sanctions against a Canadian member of the ICC.)
Fortunately, those nations that still believe in international justice have come to the defence of the ICC. The European Union (EU) has made a statement declaring “Attacks or threats against the Court, elected officials, personnel and those cooperating with the Court, including civil society representatives and service providers, are not acceptable.” The statement went on to say that the EU “reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the rules-based international order,” and that it intends to “work closely with the ICC to ensure it continues to operate effectively.”
Canada, too, has voiced its support. In a statement with Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, our government expressed “unwavering support for the independence, impartiality and integrity of the ICC.”
A group of Canadian jurists don’t think this is enough. Payam Akhavan, who was appointed as a special adviser on genocide at the ICC in 2021, says in despair, “These institutions, which were once sacrosanct, are besieged.” He and other Canadian legal professionals call on the federal government to strengthen the ICC through additional funding or other measures, including legislation that would protect Canadian ICC staff by preventing Canadian companies from complying with the U.S. sanctions.
This would seem perfectly in tune with Prime Minister Carney’s call for the middle powers to engage in “collective investments in resilience,” in this case the resilience of international justice.
Few institutions are more important to world peace than world courts. The appropriateness of a jurist for the Nobel Peace Prize at a time when these courts are under threat is self-evident. And there could be no better choice than Navi Pillay.