Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to Navanethem Pillay

12 hours ago (nobelprize.org)

I was just checking which were the top guesses on polymarket before the announcement and this winner was not even a choice on there. At least we know there's no insider trading at the Nobel foundation.

Great to see that they're not afraid to stand up to the rising authoritarianism

  • And last year it went to someone praising Netanyahu on multiple occasions and tried very hard to kiss Trump’s ass—Trump even got gifted that frigging medal, which was a huge embarrassment for the committee a couple months back. That’s among a long list of extremely questionable recipients. Sure they may have selected the “right” recipient (to some) this year. But why even bother paying attention to a broken clock.

    • María Corina Machado has stood up against authoritarianism in Venezuela for more than a decade. I don't think awarding the prize should require that the recipient is a perfect person or holds all of the "correct" opinions according to bystanders who have no skin in the game.

      5 replies →

    • The Peace Prize seems somewhat hit or miss. I'm sure we all remember when it was given to Barack Obama for his lifelong work of not being George W Bush. And of course it was given to Henry Effin' Kissinger.

      Maybe this speaks to the difficulty of peace in general. One asshole warmonger can destroy thousands of lives on a whim, but ending or preventing war takes long, steady efforts by large numbers of people. It's not very amenable to an individual prize.

      4 replies →

    • Many "hard science" Nobel prize recipients also turned out to be complete embarrassment of themselves... There is even a name for that. "Nobel disease".

      1 reply →

  • I mean, if the really gave the prize to Trump, they would completely destroy their credibility. That's better left to FIFA (not that FIFA had a lot of credibility before creating a peace prize to award it to Trump).

  • The committee is independent from politics although some dictators may at times misunderstand that.

    • Where does it say that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is independent from politics?

      As stated on their webpage, "As far as possible, the composition of the Committee is to reflect the relative strengths of the political parties in the Storting." - https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-committee/

      It is independent to the sitting Norwegian government, as members can't have current seats both in the committee and Storting, but several committee do represent the political parties in Norway.

      Currently the committee is made from former Leader of the Centre Party, a foreign policy scholar and writer, former Conservative Party cabinet member that was the Minister of Education and Research, a Political scientist and Chief Executive Officer of Utøya AS, and last the former Labour Party Foreign Affairs Secretary.

    • I find it hard to see how the committee can be genuinely independent of politics when its members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament.

      11 replies →

    • "independent from politics" seems to have a few different meanings. One is inherently bad and another is not necessarily bad. Of course the committee is political and the entire nature of the award is political.

    • It is not really. They claim so but the members are appointed by the Norwegian government. One of the members, Asle Toje, is very much a political appointed member by the right-wing FRP party.

      This process is decided by the Alfred Nobel will.

    • They're so independent from politics they gave a Peace Prize to President "Drone Strikes" Obama after he was in office for merely a year.

My wife (also of Indian descent and from Durban) was happy when I forwarded her a BBC link of this news.

She remembered her late mother used to talk a lot of her as she managed to become a lawyer despite being an Indian in apartheid South Africa.

What a courageous woman. There is so much suffering and horror involved. And Scandinavians aren't shy to set a statement.

Unfortunately Nobel Peace prizes are stained with the reputation of going to some pretty undeserving people (Henry Kissinger, Shimon Peres, Obama, etc) and this mars the image of the prize even as a whole.

There are actually people who spend their lives working for peace, and die in the effort. And then there are people like Henry Kissinger. They share the same prize.

More recently, the prizes are even more obviously politicized(1), so when the west is trying to overthrow Iran, it gives the prize to western-backed dissidents fighting for "women's rights" in Iran - the nation that has female airline pilots and university professors, but not to the scores of dissidents executed by Saudi Arabia, where women only recently got the right to drive. None of those murdered by Saudi Arabia, even if they died arguing for women's rights, will ever qualify for the Nobel Peace price. Not while Iran still needs to be overthrown.

1. See https://www.eureporter.co/nobel-peace-prize/2025/10/27/when-... for a survey of recent winners and what political agenda was pushed with each award.

  • >"There are actually people who spend their lives working for peace, and die in the effort."

    These people would not be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize, because its rules disallow deceased candidates.

    • It would be politically untenable to condemn Saudi, so there is that element too.

      If they cut up the journalist Jamal Khashoggi with a bone saw on foreign soil and get away with it, why would they change?

I'll be amused to see how the administration reacts. Perhaps we'll end up having the Trump Prizes.

  • Satire is mostly dead in this world of clownocracy, but someone should prank-call FIFA and ask them who's the winner of this year's FIFA Peace Prize...

    • I don’t know which would be funnier: either (a) Trump wins the Peace Prize for a second year in a row, or (b) they go down the designated survivor list of succession…

      1 reply →

  • I've been thinking that part of the point of handing out a bunch of science prizes to the techbros yesterday was to try to overshadow the Nobel prizes.

> in 2019 she became an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2026/pillay/facts/

I wonder who committed said genocide... oh, yeah, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1991/kyi/facts/

  • Committee can’t predict the future man, they only had her actions before 1991. Her showing up at the ICJ was probably a move to appease the military and it didn’t work, they ousted her in 2021 anyway. If you want change argue for awarding it posthumously or that the prize is for worthy actions already done, in which case there are easier targets like Kissinger

    • > Committee can’t predict the future man

      Sure, but is it really that difficult to give the *Peace* prize to someone who will not commit genocide eventually? Most people in the world never commit genocide.

      4 replies →

  • She didn't commit genocide.

    After she won the Nobel Prize, the Burmese legislature banded together to give her the power to:“contact ministries, departments, organizations, associations and individuals" to promote democracy and free market capitalism.

    Basically, she had the power to talk to people as a figurehead for the hopes and ideals of the country, but no power to actually pass or enforce laws, and no control over law enforcement or the military.

    What exactly were you expecting her to do? Say mean things about the military officers committing the genocides and hope they got embarrassed enough to stop?

    • Do you think asking them to stop a genocide is unreasonable?

      But either way, she wasn’t silent on the issue. She minimised what was happening, talked about violence on both sides and defended the military committing a genocide in The Hague. She helped block investigations into it. She is complicit.

      ‘In December 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice at The Hague where she defended the Burmese military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya’.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi

Reminder that the US administration is on a campaign to dismantle the ICC for echoing similar findings to this Nobel Prize winner in her role at UNHRC [1].

I'm extremely grateful to, and humbled by, these people continuing their brave work knowing they will face the full wrath of the US and Israel govs and their campaigns to dismantle accountability for the worst crimes.

[1] https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...

  • "The ICC poses an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty – it claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials operating on behalf of America’s national interest. Americans never signed up for this, and all American presidents since the ICC’s ratification have maintained that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Americans. The ICC previously opened an investigation into U.S. servicemen and intelligence officers and has since refused to close these cases."

    Yeah, but somehow if i do some illegal shit according to USA they have no problem arresting me when i come visit (or if they really eager they come to visit me). But how dare you tell us what we can do or cant do INTOLERABLE.

    • Yes, that’s what sovereignty means: a sovereign state governs itself and is not governed by others. A sovereign state can agree to abide by certain rules or submit some disputes to another arbiter, but it does so consensually by treaty. The US never ratified a treaty establishing the authority of the ICC, so it has not consented to that diminution of sovereignty.

      You as an individual are not sovereign, and when you come to the land over which the US is sovereign, you are subject to US law.

      27 replies →

  • > campaign to dismantle the ICC for echoing similar findings

    i feel like this misrepresents what the ICC has found. They found there was enough plausible cause to issue a warrant. That means they think that a trial should take place to figure out what is going on. It does not mean they think anyone is guilty. Lots of people subject to warrants end up being found innocent. Its step 1 of the process not the entire process.

    And to further clarify, if your implication is that its similar to accusations of genocide - the ICC has jurisdiction over genocide and did not publicly issue a warrant for that charge against any israeli national.

    To be clear i find the us campaign disgusting.

    • Warrant issuance is only done if pre-trial chamber deems the suspects would continue the crimes (they very apparently did - total blockade of Gaza in 2025 leading to starvation of around 1 million people), or tamper with investigation (killing witnesses, etc. - also happened, many journalists were killed on purpose since, organizations tracking harm were banned as "terrorists" in Israel, and that's just what's easy to see, and lots of evidence is being destroyed to this day as Israel continues blowing up and buldozing Gaza, also on purpose, and also against orders of ICJ in the case against Israel as a state, not just against Netanyahu).

      And you don't know much about the ICC process and could not have observed it if you think warrant is step 1. It's like step 7. If you did not watch the process, you can still learn the ICC procedure from the rules of the court. It's all freely available on their website.

  • [flagged]

This announcement has become an annual troll event for the lunatic in the office; I heard he was pretty pissed off this morning, although that’s usually the case with him.

[flagged]

[flagged]

  • > "At this point"

    Of the original 5 Nobel prize categories, 2 were always not about science.

    • yes ... but who is she? and what has she actually done?

      for comparison, i knew nothing about margaret hamilton or bill draper before reading their obituaries on HN this month. it literally took a few sentences to understand what legends they were .. not just in their respective domains, but in terms of their broader impact on humanity ..

      with this navi lady, i've scrolled through two pages of text and still don't have a clear picture of what she actually DID to deserve whatever greatness the Nobel seems to bestow upon her.

      i mean, if you can't even explain to a layman, in plain english, what someone actually DID to earn a prize of this stature .. without resorting to a laundry list of causes and buzzwords ... then what exactly are we rewarding here ? Her kindness ? Decency ? Morality ? wtf

      8 replies →

  • I suggest looking at the original Nobel* awards before deriding "modern politics" as a boogyman

[flagged]

  • Yes, but what has that to do with this year's winner?

    • Everything. She hasn't contributed to world peace. She has not stopped wars, she has not prevented them, south africa is not more peaceful than it was before.

      Just rename the award to whatever - being outstanding human, standing up for human rights or whatever.

      If Putin decides to freeze or stop the war in Ukraine tomorrow he will contribute more to world peace objectively than last 10 of the winners combined. Should we give him award too?

      1 reply →

[flagged]

  • It is, like many things, how much meaning you attach to it yourself. Apparently Donald T. thinks it's very important, he makes a lot of fuss about it.

    Anyway, the NPP is one of the things that tries to push humanity on a broad scale in a better direction, and I'm grateful for that. It is important to at least speak out about injustice, and to celebrate those who do so, otherwise those injustices are never going to be fixed (I'm not even talking about punishing, although that should be done).

    • I get the sentiment, but if you hijack peoples attention by pretending "look we are civilized, we have humanitarian organizations" instead showing the ugly reality, this in my book is worse.

      1 reply →

The problem is you have to be noteworthy enough to be considered; and are going to be in close proximity of atrocities (hopefully trying to prevent them). Realistically this means a higher percentage of laureate are now generally accepted to have some complicity in atrocities then the percentage of normal people.

  • Which maybe is ok? It’s not a “most perfect person” prize, it’s a “did the most to advance peace” prize.

    It makes people uncomfortable, but maybe someone who reduces net suffering despite being responsible for some suffering is doing more than normal people who do no harm, but do no good?

    • Yikes, never looked at it that way. I always think of the people making things better, or that move the needle more worldwide but you are very right, the Nobel Prize is going to be awarded to someone who has been in war zones where there are tough decisions to be made