Nobel Peace Prize winner Navanethem “Navi” Pillay poked fun at President Donald Trump in the moments immediately after finding out she had been named as this year’s honoree.
In a video shared on X, Pillay could be heard jokingly telling those applauding her, “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.” Her comment was met with laughter from her supporters in the room. She was in Nuremberg, Germany, when she found out the news.
Pillay, 85, was there attending a forum, in the same city where Nazi war criminals were put to trial in the aftermath of World War II. She was in the same room where the trials took place when she was announced as the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
The South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief has built a decades-spanning career over the course of her life. Through her work, she has done everything from defended the rights of a then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela to helming a panel that determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza. The Nobel Peace Prize committee said Friday she had been chosen in honor of her work promoting international law at a time when it is under attack.
Amazing moment.
Navi Pillay has received the Nobel Peace Prize ! https://t.co/HL3r1PJzLO
We are at the Nuremberg Court; I cannot think of a stronger symbol for her Nobel prize.
We are all so thrilled!
This is her first reactions upon hearing the news: https://t.co/Crbj6XdiyQ
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) October 9, 2026
“This year’s laureate has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted,” the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee wrote in a statement Friday, explaining its decision to award Pillay on the prize’s 125th anniversary. “At a time of existential challenges – including more wars and conflicts than the world has seen in a long time – international law is no longer just a supplement to peace and security. It is an absolute necessity.”
“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” the committee continued. “In awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wants to remind the world that the rule of law – national and international – underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts non-violently. Peace requires justice.”
Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have rejected the genocidal findings of Pillay’s U.N. commission regarding Gaza.
“The Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass,” the official X account for Netanyahu’s office wrote Friday in response to Pillay’s win. “It has awarded its highest honor to a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”
Pillay’s dig at Trump comes one year after Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts fighting against tyranny in Venezuela. She won despite President Trump’s open campaigning for the award. Machado later gave Trump her Nobel prize, after the United States removed then-President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.
However, the Nobel Committee has labeled the move purely symbolic, stating that the prize itself cannot be transferred by a winner.
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