'More applause and I'll have to share this prize with Trump,' Nobel laureate Pillay quips

"If you applaud any more, I may have to share this prize with Trump."

That was the quip from Navi Pillay, 85, an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate — a pointed jab at US President Donald Trump, who has long insisted he deserves the prize himself.

According to AFP and CBS News, Pillay held a press conference Friday (local time) at the Nuremberg courthouse in Germany — the same building where Nazi leaders were tried after World War II — and said it "may have been destiny" that she was in that historic courtroom when she learned she had won.

The South African jurist was visiting Germany to attend the Nuremberg Forum when the Nobel Committee announced her name.

She admitted she initially thought the news was a joke and said, as a lawyer, she wanted to verify it herself. A roughly three-minute video posted to X by Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, showed Pillay receiving congratulations from colleagues after learning of the award.

Her instinct to treat the news as a joke had some context. Last year's laureate, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, handed her Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump earlier this year. The Nobel Committee drew a line, saying the medal could be passed on but the laureate status could not.

"I dedicate this prize to all survivors of international crimes," Pillay said. "We live in a time when international law and human rights are under political attack — as is clearly evident from the attacks on the International Criminal Court." The ICC is the international tribunal that prosecutes war crimes and genocide. She urged political leaders to uphold their legal obligations to protect human rights and avoid war.

Trump has been the ICC's most aggressive critic. In a speech at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 22, he called the court a "rogue institution" and urged all member states to withdraw. Washington has steadily ratcheted up pressure on the court since the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2024. Pillay served as an ICC judge from 2003 to 2008.

She has also clashed with Israel. Leading an independent commission of inquiry established by the UN Human Rights Council, she released a report last September concluding that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. The commission does not speak for the UN as an institution, and Israel has flatly rejected its findings. Pillay said she was surprised to be praised for courage over the report, asking, "Why should it take courage to tell the truth?"

Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the award was a message to those who undermine international systems and institutions. The committee, however, did not mention Gaza when it announced the reasons for its decision.

Israel pushed back immediately. Its foreign ministry condemned the award as a "grotesque weaponization" of the prize, and Netanyahu said the Nobel Committee had "lost its moral compass."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions targeting the ICC as an institution — rather than individual judges and prosecutors, as had been the case previously — just hours after the announcement. Whether the sanctions were directly tied to the Nobel Prize announcement was not confirmed. Trump, rather than issuing a statement himself, shared on Truth Social a post by a lawyer who had criticized Pillay and the Nobel Committee.

Pillay began her legal career as a lawyer during South Africa's apartheid era. As a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, she helped establish the precedent that sexual violence during wartime can constitute genocide. She served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. She currently sits as an ad hoc judge in ICJ proceedings examining allegations of genocide against Myanmar's Rohingya people. The ICJ is the UN court that adjudicates legal disputes between states.

The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10 in Oslo, Norway. In a call with the Nobel Institute, Pillay said the prize was "for all of us, not just one person."