Trump Calls Nobel Pick 'Disgraceful' After Pillay WinWorld

Pillay, one of South Africa’s most prominent jurists, was honoured on Friday for her decades of work against war crimes and crimes against humanity. She headed the international tribunal that prosecuted those accused in the Rwanda genocide and last year presided over a United Nations commission that accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. She currently sits as a judge in a case before the International Court of Justice in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide.

The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, said Pillay had been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted”. The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and prize money of $1.2 million.

Trump has made little secret of his desire for the prize since returning to the White House in January 2025. Experts in Oslo, quoted by international outlets before the announcement, argued that his war on Iran, his territorial ambitions over Greenland, his hard line on migration and his attacks on multilateral institutions and the press had disqualified him.

In a lighter moment after the announcement, Pillay joked to an applauding crowd that she might share the prize with Trump if they clapped a little more — an apparent reference to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who presented her own Nobel gold medal to Trump after winning the prize last year.

The controversy unfolded as the Trump administration also moved to sanction the International Criminal Court in the wake of the Nobel announcement, a step the court condemned as an “assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order”, The News reported. Pillay, who has spent her career defending international justice, is seen by supporters as a figure the award places squarely at the centre of the global debate on accountability.