MONETABRIEF – Former UN human rights chief and a critic of Sri Lanka’s human rights record Navi Pillay was named winner of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote peace and international law.
Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, an 85-year-old South African jurist and current judge at the International Court of Justice, had been a prominent advocate for Sri Lankans affected by the island’s decades-long Tamil separatist war.
The war had claimed over 100,000 lives with more than 40,000 people, mostly Tamil civilians, allegedly killed by government forces in the final months of the conflict that ended in May 2009.
She was the first UN high commissioner for human rights to visit Sri Lanka after the end of the war, arriving in 2013 to investigate allegations of war crimes.
Pillay dedicated her award to the “survivors of international crimes”, speaking on Friday from the Nuremberg courtroom where the post-war trials of Nazi leaders took place.
Pillay has been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted”, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo. The award was announced on Friday.
At the end of a week-long visit to Sri Lanka in August 2013, she accused the then government of Mahinda Rajapaksa and defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa of becoming “increasingly authoritarian”.
Pillay alleged that military officials were harassing and intimidating priests, journalists and other civilians as punishment for meeting her during her fact-finding mission.
"I am deeply concerned that Sri Lanka … is showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction," she told reporters at the end of her visit.
“You don’t invite a person like me to the country and then do this type of thing. This type of surveillance and harassment appears to be getting worse in Sri Lanka, which is a country where critical voices are quite often attacked or even permanently silenced,” she said.
Outside the UN compound in Colombo, dozens of Buddhist monks from the Ravana Balaya group demonstrated, accusing Pillay of siding with minority Tamils.
The UN rights chief’s mission took her to the former war zones of the country’s north and east to meet relatives of people who disappeared during the conflict.
Sri Lanka has resisted demands from the UN and Western nations for a “credible” investigation into allegations that up to civilians were ordered into no-fire zones and bombed.
Colombo had dropped its public hostility towards Pillay and approved her visit after previously accusing her of overstepping her mandate. The U-turn came as Canada led calls for a boycott of a Commonwealth summit due to take place in Colombo in mid-November.
But relations deteriorated during the trip, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa accusing the UN of bias and Pillay of pre-judging Sri Lanka during talks between the two.
She said she had never before encountered intimidation of civilians after they had spoken with UN officials, despite carrying out missions in more than 60 countries.
“I wish to stress that the United Nations takes the issue of reprisals against people because they have talked to UN officials as an extremely serious matter,” she said. (Colombo/October9/2026)