Oslo (AFP) - The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to South Africa’s Navi Pillay, the judge who headed the Rwanda genocide tribunal and presided over a UN commission which accused Israel of genocide in Gaza – a move angrily denounced by Israel.

The 85-year-old, who is currently a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case in which Myanmar also stands accused of genocide, has spent her career defending international law.

She dedicated her award to the “survivors of international crimes”, speaking Friday from the courtroom in Nuremberg, Germany where the trials prosecuting World War II Nazi leaders took place.

Pillay 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.

Israel’s foreign ministry said the award legitimised “anti-Israel hatred”, and that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels must be “applauding from hell”.

The daughter of a bus driver in a family of Tamil descent, Pillay’s career has taken her from South African courts, where she defended anti-apartheid activists, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

She headed 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.

Pillay told AFP at the time that her team had shared “thousands of pieces of information” with prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

Israel had categorically rejected the report’s findings, slamming it as “distorted and false”.

Pillay’s “independence, her expertise and steadfastness have made her one of the most respected international jurists of our time,” the Nobel committee said.

In Nuremberg, Pillay said world leaders have a “legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war”, and criticised attacks on the ICC.

“We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack,” she said.

“This worsening reality is particularly visible with the attacks on the International Criminal Court,” she continued.

US President Donald Trump last month called for all ICC member states to quit the body, denouncing it as a “rogue institution”.

Earlier, she reacted to the news about her prize by making a quip about Trump’s well-documented desire to win the prize himself.

“If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” Pillay said earlier during a standing ovation captured on video by Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard in Nuremberg and posted on the social network X.

- ‘Courage to speak the truth’ -

The Nobel committee said that while its prize honoured Pillay’s career of fighting genocide, it was not taking a stand on whether Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.

Pillay noted that many had paid tribute to her courage in that report.

“You can imagine how surprised I was. Why would you need courage to speak the truth?”

The UN said her prize was a “testament to the need and to the value of human rights in this world more than ever”, while the ICC said her award was of “particular significance” given the attacks on international law.

The prize for Pillay is sure to anger Trump, whose administration has repeatedly attacked international justice institutions.

“This is a clear message to those who are putting pressure on these institutions, to those who are sanctioning the judges and are attacking the institutions. That needs to stop,” Frydnes told AFP after the announcement.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has made no secret of his desire to win the prize, insisting that he was the most deserving candidate and claiming to have ended up to eight wars.

But his war against Iran, his territorial expansion ambitions as in Greenland, his hard line on migrants, and his attacks on multilateralism and the media have, according to experts in Oslo, disqualified him for the prize.

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 prize’s creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.