UN Commission Chair Navi Pillay to Receive Nobel Peace Prize

Navi Pillay, former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and chair of the UN commission of inquiry into human rights violations in the Palestinian territories, will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A year ago, Pillay headed a commission that officially concluded in a UN report that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Pillay, an 85-year-old South African jurist of Indian descent, is a prominent global figure in human rights and international law. She previously served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1999 to 2003, and a judge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague from 2003 to 2008.

The commission she led stated that senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, acted in a manner that incited atrocities in the Gaza Strip. In response to the report, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein called the commission members "proxies of Hamas" and asserted the report was based on Hamas lies. Reuters reported at the time that the 72-page report cited the scale of killing, obstruction of humanitarian aid, "declared ethnic cleansing," and destruction of fertility clinics as evidence for the genocide accusation.

Pillay stated that the accusations of atrocities involved Israeli authorities at the highest levels, responsible for leading a "murderous campaign" for nearly two years with the clear intent to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel did not cooperate with the commission, and its diplomatic mission in Geneva accused the commission of pursuing a political agenda against Israel. The report is considered the most severe attributed to the UN to date, though the commission operates independently and does not officially represent the UN's position. The report's publication carries no binding authority regarding the war or Israel.