‘I may share this prize with Trump’ — Nobel winner Pillay
South African lawyer and champion of international law Navi Pillay addresses journalists after she was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, on October 9, 2026 at the historic Courtroom 600 of Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice, venue of the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials against leaders of defeated Nazi Germany, in Nuremberg, southern Germany, where she was attending the Nuremberg Forum 2026 conference of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South Africa’s Navi Pillay, the judge who headed the Rwanda genocide tribunal and who last year presided over a UN commission which accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. Pillay, currently a judge on the International Court of Justice in a case where Myanmar also stands accused of genocide, has been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo. (Photo by Frank BOXLER / AFP)
South African champion of international law Navi Pillay, who was awarded this year’s Nobel peace prize, joked that she might “share the prize” with US President Donald Trump if people kept applauding her.
“If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” Pillay said in a video posted to X by the Secretary General of Amnesty International, which showed Pillay being applauded in Nuremberg after the announcement of the award.
She said that her first reaction to hearing the news was that it must be a joke.
“Being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this,” the 85-year-old said, wanting to make sure it was true.
Pillay mentioned her work heading the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the world body, and which last year found that genocide was occurring in Gaza.
“The last thing I did is the delivery of the report on Gaza, naming what’s happening there as genocide,” she said.
“One of the main reactions to that report is paying tribute to me for my courage. And you can imagine how surprised I was, why would you need courage to speak the truth?” she added.
The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million.
The award will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prizes’ creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.