Trump lashes out over Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Navanethem Pillay

US President Donald Trump overnight published a long, scathing post on his Truth Social platform about the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to South African jurist Navanethem "Navi" Pillay. He called the choice an "indelible stain on Norway", whose Nobel committee awards the prize. The post followed criticism at a campaign rally in Syracuse, New York, on Friday, where he described the decision as "disgraceful and embarrassing".

Trump's claims

Trump wrote that he knew nothing about Pillay and that, to the best of his knowledge, no one had heard of her, other than that she "very obviously hates Israel". He claimed he should have won eight Nobel Peace Prizes for having "settled 8 wars" and said he would soon "settle, or win" two more, pointing to the wars in Iran and Ukraine. The conflicts he listed were Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Israel and Hamas. He described Pillay as a "liberal person who works at the United Nations" and said the prize had been "forever discredited".

Who is Pillay

Pillay was born in Durban, on South Africa's east coast. She served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. Earlier in her career she was a defence attorney for anti-apartheid activists, helping establish rights for prisoners on Robben Island. She later served as an acting judge on the South African High Court and as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. From 2003 to 2008 she sat on the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2025, as chair of the UN-linked Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, she accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.

On learning of her win, Pillay joked that if people "clap a little bit more", she might share the prize with Trump. This appeared to refer to last year's winner, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who presented her award to Trump.

US sanctions on the ICC

On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions on the International Criminal Court, which Washington has repeatedly accused of "politicised actions" and of "targeting Israel". He said the US would ban transactions with the court to cut off its resources.