Navi Pillay | |
|---|---|
 Pillay in 2014 | |
| United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights | |
| In office 1 September 2008 – 31 August 2014 | |
| Secretary General | Ban Ki-moon |
| Deputy | Kang Kyung-wha Flavia Pansieri |
| Preceded by | Louise Arbour |
| Succeeded by | Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad |
| Judge of the International Criminal Court | |
| In office 11 March 2003 – 31 August 2008 | |
| President of theInternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda | |
| In office 1999–2003 | |
| Preceded by | Laity Kama |
| Succeeded by | Erik Møse |
| Judge of theInternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda | |
| In office 1995–2003 | |
| Judge of theHigh Court of South Africa | |
| In office 1995–1995 | |
| Nominated by | Nelson Mandela |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Navanetham Nadoo (1941-09-23)23 September 1941 (age 84) |
| Spouse | Gaby Pillay |
| Education | |
Navanethem "Navi"Pillay (née Naidoo; born 23 September 1941) is a South African jurist who served as theUnited NationsHigh Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.[1] A South African ofIndianTamil origin, Pillay was the firstnon-white woman judge of theHigh Court of South Africa.[2] She has also served as ajudge of the International Criminal Court and President of theInternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.[2] Her four-year term as High Commissioner for Human Rights began on 1 September 2008[1] and was extended an additional two years in 2012.[3] In September 2014Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad succeeded her in her position as High Commissioner for Human Rights.[4] In April 2015, Pillay became the 16th Commissioner of theInternational Commission Against the Death Penalty.[5] She is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched byReporters Without Borders.[6]
Pillay was born and raised inDurban, South Africa where she later attended theUniversity of Natal, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and her Bachelor of Law in 1965.[7] After university, Pillay pursued a career as an attorney and served under criminal defense attorney N.T. Naicker, joining the legal defense againstapartheid.[7] In 1967, Pillay started her own law firm and became the first woman to do so in her home province ofNatal.[7] In 1981, Pillay applied to and attendedHarvard University under the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program[7] and earned her Master of Law.[3] In 1988, she completed her thesis and graduated fromHarvard Law School with a Doctorate of Jurisprudence.[8]
Pillay was nominated and confirmed to the High Court of South Africa by theJudicial Service Commission under supervision of the bar association in 1995.[9] Towards the end of her term, the Minister of JusticeAbdullah Omar and President Mandela submitted her name as a nominee for theU.N. Security Council and a judge on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1995.[9] Between 1999 and 2003, Pillay served on the ICTR[1] and was electedPresident Judge.[7] In 2003, theAssembly of States Parties to theRome Statue of the ICC elected her as a judge in the International Criminal Court and served as member of theAppeals Chamber until 2008.[10] In 2008, the Secretary GeneralBan Ki Moon[11] appointed Pillay and the General Assembly of the U.N. approved her position as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.[11]
She is currently serving as anad hoc judge of theInternational Court of Justice onTheGambia v Myanmar.[12] In addition, she is the Chair of the U.N.Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty in Madrid, the President of the Advisory Council of theInternational Nuremberg Principles Academy, and the Chair of the Quasi-Judicial Inquiry into Detention in theDemocratic People's Republic of Korea.[12]
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Navanetham Nadoo was born to Narrainsamy Nadoo and Santhama Nadoo in 1941 in a poor neighborhood ofDurban,Natal Province,Union of South Africa ofIndianTamil descent.[8] Her grandparents came from India asindentured servants to work on South African sugarplantations in Natal in the 1890s.[8] Her parents had anarranged marriage during their early teens and had eight children, the fifth being Pillay.[7] Narrainsamy was a bus-driver by trade and took up other jobs such as fishing to supplement their income while Santhama was a homemaker.[7] The two raised their family with strongHindu values, emphasizing equality between the men and women in the family.[7] While most of Pillay's counterparts during elementary school were married off, her parents insisted she and her two other sisters attend school like their brothers.[8] At the time, there were more children in South Africa than there were spots in schools.[7][8] Adamant on ensuring education for all her children, Pillay's mother would wait in long admission lines, using the birth certificates of her older children to get her younger children into school.[7] With limited money for school supplies, Santhama Pillay would stitch together notebooks for her younger children, using blank pages from the used notebooks of her elder children.[8]
In school, Pillay experienced an environment completely different than her home life, learning a new religion in a new language.[7] Despite their personal beliefs, teachers were strictly prohibited from addressing politics, including apartheid, out of fear that the school administration would retaliate.[7]
Pillay had her first encounter with the law when she was five years old and testified in court after being robbed of 5 pounds.[7] Her mother had given her the money to give to her father as these were his wages for the month.[7] While the subject was convicted, the court did not return the money to her father.[7]
Pillay received many accolades for her writing during her early childhood. When she was 10 years old, Pillay wrote an in-class essay on how black individuals received heavier sentences than their white counterparts in South African courts using information she had overheard from her parents and teachers since she could not access radios or newspapers.[7] At age 14, Pillay submitted an essay on why South Africans should buy South-African made commerce to a competition held by the Durban Chamber of Commerce, later receiving a bronze medal for her work.[7] At 15, Pillay published an essay on the role of women in instilling values in children which earned her an award of books from the Jewish Women's Union.[7]
Supported by donations from the local Indian community, she graduated from theUniversity of Natal with a BA in 1963 and anLLB in 1965.[7] She was sponsored by the citizens of Clairwood, the Durban City Council, and a scholarship from the university.[7] During her years at the University of Natal, the campus was extremely politically active.[7] Most classes and graduations were segregated which infuriated many students on campus.[7] Under apartheid, Pillay was forced to share what limited resources they were given amongst all non-white students at the university.[7] She once had to share a required textbook in a non-white library with 20 of her other non-white classmates.[7] In 1959, South Africa passed theSeparate Universities Act which forced previously de-segregated universities to re-segregate.[7] As a result, Pillay was forced to transfer to the nearest non-white university, University at Salisbury Island, after her first year of university.[7] While the University of Natal offered an LLB program, University at Salisbury Island did not.[7] She filed for an exemption withMinister of Justice, calling the office directly after receiving no response and was then able to return to Natal where she could finish her degree.[7] She later attendedHarvard Law School, obtaining anLLM in 1982 and aDoctor of Juridical Science degree in 1988.[7] Pillay is the first South African to obtain a doctorate in law fromHarvard Law School.[13]
She met her husband Paranjothee “Gaby” Anthony Pillay in 1962 as the first lawyer she offered a contract of articles to.[7] In January 1965, the two married, eventually going on to have two daughters.[1]
Pillay has spent much of her legal career advocating for the preservation of international human rights law, with a special focus on crimes regarding rape and sexual violence.[10] She was very involved in the anti-apartheid movement, defending political opponents of apartheid in their cases against the state for poor prison conditions and the wrongful use of torture.[14][7]
After graduating University of Natal, Pillay had the choice of becoming anadvocate or an attorney.[7] Pillay chose to pursue a legal career as an attorney which required two years of service as an attorney before becoming an admitted attorney.[7] She served under N.T. Naiker for two years, a member of theAfrican National Congress. Naiker was often under house arrest and had to rely on Pillay to testify for his clients in courts.[7] In 1967, Pillay became one of three women admitted attorneys and the first non-white[15] woman to open her own law practice inNatal Province.[2] She says she had no other alternative: "No law firm would employ me because they said they could not have white employees taking instructions from a coloured person".[16] As a non-white lawyer under theApartheid regime, she was not allowed to enter a judge's chambers.[16]
During her 28 years as a lawyer inSouth Africa, she defendedanti-Apartheid activists[17] of the African National Congress, the Unity Movement, theBlack Consciousness Movement, andAzapo.[7] She also helped expose the use oftorture[17] and poor conditions of political detainees.[16] When her husband was detained in 1971 under theTerrorism Act, she successfully sued to prevent the police from using unlawful methods of interrogation against him.[18] In 1973, she won the right for political prisoners onRobben Island, includingNelson Mandela, to have access to lawyers inState v Kader Hassim and 9 others andState vHarry Gwala and 9 others.[7][19] While providing legal counsel, her clients recommended she consult judges with expertise in international law and humanitarian law on their cases.[7] Pillay then applied to and attendedHarvard University in 1981 under the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program and earned her Master of Law.[7] The Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program was a foreign exchange program created by anti-apartheid activists on Harvard's campus.[8] They demanded that if the university were to continue to invest in companies that did business with South Africa under apartheid that they offer opportunities for South African students to study at Harvard.[8] After completing her thesis, she graduated fromHarvard Law School with a Doctorate of Jurisprudence in 1988. She co-founded the Advice Desk for the Abused and ran a shelter for victims of domestic violence.[18] As a member of theWomen's National Coalition, she contributed to the inclusion in South Africa's Constitution of an equality clause prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation.[20] In 1992, she co-founded the international women's rights groupEquality Now.[20]
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In 1995, the year after theAfrican National Congress came to power, Pillay was nominated and confirmed to the High Court of South Africa by the President Nelson Mandela and theJudicial Service Commission[21] under supervision of the bar association, becoming the first non-white woman to serve on the court.[7] The Judicial Service Commission is a group of jurists hand picked by the President to screen incoming candidates on the High Court of South Africa and compile the list of nominees.[22] Pillay's connection with Nelson Mandela during their work against apartheid made her a familiar name to Mandela during his presidency, putting her on the short-list for the nomination to the court.[8] Shortly after her appointment, PresidentNelson Mandela called Pillay to personally congratulate her on her judgeship stating “your appointment gives me great personal joy. I hope it soon will be important”.[7] She noted that "the first time I entered a judge's chambers was when I entered my own."[19]
Her tenure on the High Court was short, as theUnited Nations General Assembly elected her to serve as a judge at theInternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) shortly after.[16][23]
In 1995, the Minister of JusticeAbdullah Omar and President Mandela submitted Pillay's name as a nominee for theU.N. Security Council and a judge on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).[21] Between 1999 and 2003, Pillay served on the ICTR and was elected President Judge.[24] She served for eight years, including four years as president.[23] She was the only female judge for the first four years of the tribunal.[25] Her tenure on the ICTR is best remembered for her role in the landmark trial ofJean-Paul Akayesu, which established thatrape andsexual assault could constitute acts ofgenocide.[26][25][27][24] Pillay said in an interview, "From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime. We want to send out a strong signal that rape is no longer a trophy of war."[27]
In the case ofThe Prosecutor v Jean-PaulAkayesu on 2 September 1988, the court indicted Akayesu for being individually responsible for death and harm ofTutsis during theRwandan Genocide.[28] It was during the case that Pillay was able to set an international legal precedent which consideredrape as a form of genocide and acrime against humanity.[29] The court argued that crimes against humanity are not defined by their discriminatory intent.[30] Rather, an act is considered a crime against humanity if it "part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population".[30] In this case, Akayesu was mayor of the Taba commune where many Tutis women took refuge and purposefully instructed the militia group to target and rape civilian women.[31][32]
Pillay also served on theProsecutor vFerdinand Nahimana,Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza,Hassan Ngeze trial regarding the role theRadio Television Libre des Mille Collins (RTLM) and theKangura magazine in spreading hate propaganda against the Tutsis.[7] The criminal tribunal found thatFerdinand Nahimana was indicted for the direct and public incitement to commit genocide while working at the radio station RTLM.[33]Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was also indicted for the direct and public incitement to commit genocide at the RTLM and for his work with theCoalition for the Defence of the Republic.[33]Hassan Ngeze was also charged for the incitement of genocide in relation to his work withKangura magazine.[33] The case was significant for considering the role media plays in politics and public opinion, and its real life ramifications.[34]
Pillay garnered international recognition for her work as a judge on the ICTR and caught the attention of the members of theWomen's Caucus for Gender Justice during the late 1990s.[29] Impressed by her work, women's advocates wanted to ensure the protection of women's rights during the establishment of theInternational Criminal Court.[35] The Women's Caucus gained enough momentum to attend PrepCom and the Rome Diplomatic Conference where they codified women's rights into the ICC statue, advocating that there be quota for the number of women judges on the bench and the use of "gender" instead of "sex" in the ICC provisions of the Rome Statue.[35][29] After the establishment of the ICC, Pillay became one of the first judges to ever serve on the court.[36]
Pillay was nominated to serve on the International Criminal Court's Appeal Chambers by theAssembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute on 7 February 2003.[36][37] She waselected to a six-year term that March, but resigned in July 2008, effective 31 August 2008, in order to take up her position with the UN.[38]
One of the first cases to appear in the International Criminal Court wasThe Prosecutor vThomas Lubanga Dyilo for enlisting children under 15 years old to the armed militias inciting violence between theHema andLendu ethnic groups in theIturi, north-eastern region of theDemocratic Republic of the Congo.[39] While Dyilo was convicted for his war crimes in 2012, Pillay served on the appeals chamber during the pre-trial phase of the case from 2006 to the end of her term in 2008.[40]
On 24 July 2008,UN Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon nominated Pillay to succeedLouise Arbour asHigh Commissioner for Human Rights.[41] The United States reportedly resisted her appointment at first, because of her views onabortion and other issues, but eventually dropped its opposition.[17] At a special meeting on 28 July 2008, theUN General Assembly confirmed the nomination by consensus.[1] Her four-year term began on 1 September 2008.[1] Pillay says the High Commissioner is "the voice of the victim everywhere."[16] In 2012, she was given a two-year second term.[1]
Pillay voiced support for a gay rights resolution in the UNHRC, which was approved in 2011.[42] She also signed a document "BORN FREE AND EQUAL", a document onsexual orientation andgender identity ininternational human rights law as High Commissioner.[43]
Pillay expressed concern about pressure being placed on private companies to enact afinancial blockade againstWikiLeaks in 2010. She said such action was a violation of WikiLeaks' right to freedom of expression.[44] At a news conference in July 2014, she referred toEdward Snowden as a "human rights defender" and said, "I am raising right here some very important arguments that could be raised on his behalf so that these criminal proceedings are averted."[45]
In a speech on 8 June 2012, Pillay blacklisted the provincial government ofQuebec in Canada for human rights violations concerning the rights to peaceful protest and free expression for its student protesters, specifically in Canada.[46] The bill in question, Bill 78, required that protest groups over 50 must gain approval from authorities at least 8 hours before the planned start of the protest.[46] The reaction from human rights NGOs was mixed.[46] Quebec official sources criticized Pillay for comparing Quebec with areas known to have worse records.[46]
Pillay's call in 2012 for the suspension ofsanctions against theRobert Mugabe regime inZimbabwe was criticized by civil society groups in the country, which accused the Zimbabwean government of manipulating Pillay into overlooking the human rights violations committed by the government.[47]
Her 2013 criticism of the Sri Lankan government being an authoritarian state,[48] in alleging human rights violations and atrocities committed by them against Tamil civilians at the end of theSri Lankan civil war, led the government and its supporters to apportion her own Tamil descent as the only reason for her criticism, a claim she strongly denies.[49]
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During the2014 Gaza war, Pillay stated that both Israel and Hamas had likely violated international law.[50] Her statement that Israel had engaged in the "apparent targeting... of seven children playing on a Gaza beach"[51] during the2014 Gaza war beach bombings was criticized in aFox News op-ed byAnne Bayefsky as "incitement to hate".[52] Pillay also criticized US funding of theIron Dome program, noting that "no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling".[53][54]Tablet described the statement as a "hilariously delicious absurdity".[55] On 25 July 2014, theUnited States Congress published a letter addressed to Pillay by over 100 members in which the signatories asserted that the Human Rights Council "cannot be taken seriously as a human rights organisation" because of their investigation of Israel's conduct during the war.[56][57]
In August 2014, she criticized the international community over its "paralysis" in dealing with the more than three-year oldSyrian Civil War, which by 30 April 2014 had resulted in 191,369 deaths.[58]
The composition of the bench of theInternational Court of Justice varies from case to case, and will choose a judgead hoc to serve on the bench if there are no judges of the nationality of one or both of the parties.[59] The party of Gambia designated her as judgead hoc and she has been serving on the bench since 2019.[12]
Pillay has been serving as a judgead hoc on theRohingya genocide case for crimes of genocide since 2019, having been designated by the Gambia.[60] The case was brought by Gambia against Myanmar for violating the Genocide Convention against the ethnic groupRohingya.[61] Despite pushback from Myanmar, the court approved Gambia's case as admissible in court and continues to hold hearings.[60] The case is notable in that it involves another country suing another for war crimes in another jurisdiction, which has created a lot of pushback in the international community regarding the ICJ's jurisdiction.[61]
Pillay was chair of the UNIndependent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, created after the2021 Israel-Palestine crisis till November 2025.[12] In July 2022Miloon Kothari, a member of the commission, alluded to a "Jewish lobby controlling social media" while speaking about attempts to discredit the commission. Pillay stated that Kothari's comments had been taken out of context.[62][63] The U.S. and Europe have been vocal about their disapproval of the establishment of the commission because it has no formal end date, to which she has responded that "the occupation [of Israel] does not have end date either and you tend to support that occupation".[64]
In June 2024, the commission determined that war crimes have been committed both byHamas and Israel in the wake of the7 October attacks.[65][66] Pillay has additionally denounced Israel as disproportionately targeting children and has been hesitant to call Israel's actions self-defense.[64] In response, critics such as theJerusalem Center for Public Affairs called her comments anti-semitic.[67] The three members of the commission announced that they were planning to resign in July 2025.[68] In September 2025, the Commission of Inquiry determined that Israel had committedgenocide during the Gaza war.[66][68] In an op-ed inThe New York Times, Pillay stated that the world has an obligation to prevent genocide, including "halting the transfer of weapons and military support used in genocidal acts, ensuring unimpeded humanitarian assistance, stopping the mass displacement and destruction, and using all available diplomatic and legal means to stop the killing."[69]
In 2003, Pillay received the inauguralGruber Prize for Women's Rights.[70]
She has been awarded honorary degrees by
In 2009,Forbes ranked her as the 64th most powerful woman in the world.[76]
In 2009, she received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Archbishop Desmond Tutu at an awards ceremony at St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa.[77][78]
In 2025, she won theSydney Peace Prize.[79]
