By Monica Moorehead 
October 15, 2026

Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, a South African woman jurist and former head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 9. The chair of the Swedish-based Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, described Pillay as “one of the most courageous legal experts of our time” and “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.” (Washington Post, Oct. 9)

Pillay will receive $1.2 million in prize money.

A former lawyer in South Africa, the 85-year-old of Indian Tamil descent has defended anti-apartheid leaders like Nelson Mandela who were imprisoned by the racist regime. Following the legal end of apartheid in the mid-1990s, Pillay was appointed as a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC), set up in 2002 by the Rome Statute treaty and based in The Hague in the Netherlands. She is now a member of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the U.N. judicial body.

In 2024, Pillay led an ICC tribunal that found reasonable grounds to issue arrest warrants for officials of the Zionist State of Israel for war crimes and genocide against the people of Gaza. As a result, arrest warrants were put out against the terrorist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other cabinet members, making it legal to arrest these war criminals wherever they travel throughout the world. Unsurprisingly, both the Israeli and U.S. governments condemned the findings of the tribunal.

The immediate response from President #47 was one of complete outrage when he himself wasn’t awarded the peace prize. He disparaged Pillay, claiming that no one knew who she was and that he had stopped at least eight wars. Maybe he just forgot that he carried out unprovoked wars on Iran and Venezuela and threatens an illegal invasion of Cuba. And now #47 has slapped sanctions on all 18 judges appointed to the ICC.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) praised the ICC for awarding the peace prize to Pillay. In a press statement in response to #47’s actions, Hamas stated, “The decision by the U.S. president to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) constitutes a grave assault on international justice and a blatant attempt to protect Netanyahu and the occupation’s leaders from accountability over war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.” (Oct. 9)

There is no doubt the ICC decision has helped to further the isolation of the fascist Israeli regime globally, and that’s definitely a positive development.

Class origins of international bodies

While the ICC is tasked with recognizing those guilty of carrying out war crimes and genocide, it has no actual authority to arrest those individuals. Never in its history has the ICC recognized as war criminals representatives of imperialist countries like the U.S. The ICC could have easily recognized former President Joe Biden as a war criminal for being complicit in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people once Netanyahu was indicted.

The Nobel Peace Prize was founded by Swedish capitalist Alfred Nobel in 1901 to acknowledge people promoting “peace” and “democracy.” Recipients of this award have been a mixed bag to say the least. There may be a few instances of the peace prize committee acknowledging progressive movements. For instance, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received the 1964 award for being the leader of the non-violent wing of the Civil Rights Movement. And this year’s winner comes from a country with a strong history of a Palestinian solidarity movement on the African continent.

Nevertheless, the peace part is in reality a cover for promoting anti-communism.

In 1973, Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s Secretary of State who advocated genocidal wars against the populations in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, was actually announced as co-winner of the peace prize along with Lê Đức Thọ, a Vietnamese communist revolutionary who refused to share the award with Kissinger for orchestrating the Paris Peace Accords.

How disgusting it was in 1993 when the Nobel Committee gave equal credit to the last apartheid-era South African president, F.W. de Klerk, alongside the legendary liberation fighter, Nelson Mandela, with the peace prize for “dismantling” the white supremacist system.

And then last year, they presented the 2025 peace prize to right-wing Venezuelan dissident, María Corina Machado, who has advocated the violent overthrow of the anti-imperialist governments led by the late Hugo Chávez and the kidnapped Nicolás Maduro. Machado even had the audacity to gift her award to #47 for the overthrow of a democratically-elected president and ordering the killing of over 200 Venezuelan civilians in boat strikes.

And there are numerous other examples of why the ICC, ICJ and the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s origins and real aims should never be forgotten.