Nobel Prize 2026 (female laureates)
Navanethem "Navi" Pillay
Nobel Peace Prize 2026
Born: 23 September 1941, Durban, South Africa
Prize motivation: “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”
Champion for international legal order
Navanethem “Navi” Pillay has been at the forefront in the development of an international legal order. Ms Pillay was educated in the law and soon began defending activists who stood up against apartheid. She grew up in a family of Indian Tamil descent in Durban, South Africa, where in 1967 she founded her own law firm. In the 1980s she studied at Harvard University and earned her Doctor of Juridical Science degree there in 1988.
Dr. Pillay was appointed to the High Court of South Africa in 1995. Four years later she became a judge and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where she gained distinction for her role in establishing that sexual violence and rape as well as the spreading of propaganda could lead to indictment for crimes against humanity and genocide. She was then named to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC). From 2008 to 2014 she served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Navi Pillay also chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2021 to 2025, and 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.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee attaches importance to Navi Pillay’s role as a driving force in the development of an international system of law and order, while further emphasising her judicial rigour, personal integrity and considerable courage. At a time when the number of wars and conflicts is rising, and when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack, the Nobel Committee wishes to issue a reminder that the ability to resolve conflicts without force or violence is dependent on the international rule of law. An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world.
source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2026/pillay/facts/
Pillay for women's rights
Pillay garnered international recognition for her work as a judge on the ICTR and caught the attention of the members of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice during the late 1990s.[27] Impressed by her work, women's advocates wanted to ensure the protection of women's rights during the establishment of the International Criminal Court.[33] The Women's Caucus gained enough momentum to attend PrepCom and the Rome Diplomatic Conference where they codified women's rights into the ICC statute, advocating that there be quota for the number of women judges on the bench and the use of "gender" instead of "sex" in the ICC provisions of the Rome Statue.[33][27] After the establishment of the ICC, Pillay became one of the first judges to ever serve on the court.
In 1992, she co-founded international women's rights group Equality Now in New York, along with two other human rights lawyers, Jessica Neuwirth, and Feryal Gharahi. The aim was to bring equality for women into the field of human rights.[74][73]
Anne Carson
Nobel Prize in Literature 2026
Born: 21 June 1950, Toronto, Canada
Prize motivation: “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”
Language: English
In the biobibliography accompanying the Nobel award, committee chair Anders Olsson described Carson's juxtaposition of classical and modern writers as central to her creation of new literary forms. He cited her pairing of Simonides with Paul Celan in Economy of the Unlost, and of Thucydides with Virginia Woolf in Men in the Off Hours. He also treated her Greek translations as literary works in their own right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Carson#
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2026/carson/facts/#content
