Who is Navi Pillay, the South African judge who won the Nobel prize? We asked her biographer

International human rights judge Navi Pillay was awarded the 2026 Nobel peace prize.

She was honoured for her lifelong dedication to international law and global justice.

To understand more about Pillay and her work, we spoke with Sam Naidu, a feminist and literary scholar with a focus on crime and justice, and the author of a biography of Pillay.

You travelled to Switzerland to interview Pillay in 2009.

What lasting impression did she leave? In the biography, I describe Pillay as a down-to-earth, no-nonsense kind of person with a wicked sense of humour.

She was generous with her time and answered all my questions frankly.

She exudes strength, integrity and a keen intelligence.

Besides her colleagues at the United Nations (UN), I also spoke with family, friends and former colleagues of hers in South Africa, where I was granted access to her personal archives.

We hail from the same Indian diasporic community in Durban, and I could relate to her life story.

As a feminist scholar I chose her as the subject of a book because she was an inspirational black woman who overcame structural barriers to become a pioneer in human rights law, with a global impact.

We had communicated before my trip, but when I arrived in Geneva and she saw me for the first time, she joked, “Ah, but you are only a young one.

I was expecting an old person like me.” Under the warmth and good humour, I detected a steely grit that no foe to justice and no obstacle to human rights can quell.

As her indomitable stance in response to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu testifies, this grit seems to have strengthened over time.

Who is Navi Pillay? I would say that Navi Pillay is an extraordinary woman whose exemplary life has its origins in one of the darkest moments in the annals of human rights and the law.