In a world ravaged by war, growing disregard for fundamental human rights and the undermining of the rule of law internationally, yesterday’s Nobel Peace Prize award to the indefatigable South African judge Navi Pillay sends a powerful message to those leaders engaged in these transgressions.
Shortly after the award, the United States imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) where Justice Pillay had participated in seminal work including the finding that Israel had engaged in genocidal action in its Gaza campaign. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s subsequent description of the ICC as a rogue court may find more resonance in the way the second Trump administration has conducted itself both domestically and internationally. These roguish actions range from the extra-judicial killings of hundreds in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, the deportation of children, the unlawful conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and the ghoulish declaration by both President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth that an execution by firing squad will be livestreamed.
The ICC and its work must be defended and it is evident that the US sanctions will place Washington at even deeper odds with its traditional European allies on this matter. Brussels is unlikely to back away from the protection of the court.
Reuters said that the US Treasury announced the sanctions with a six-month initial grace period, and other exemptions that would allow some transactions for telecoms, software, payment of pensions and transactions related to detainees.
Mr Rubio said the sanctions had been structured to give the court and its member states an opportunity to address US concerns, and would be adjusted if those demands were not met.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on social media that the six-month period “offers a window for dialogue” but added that the bloc “has options to ensure that (the ICC) can continue its vital work.” Reuters said that Belgium’s foreign minister called for an EU blocking statute to be activated to protect the court.
The ICC has issued arrest warrants against more than 70 people, including world leaders and major figures in global conflicts. In addition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it has sought the arrest of Hamas figures. Others who were the subject of arrest warrants include Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The Nobel Committee conferred the award on Justice Pillay “for her efforts to promote peace and international law”.
The 85-year-old South African has been a judge on several international courts, including the ICC and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” the Nobel committee said in its citation.
“We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice. Whenever might overtakes right, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful co-existence”, the Nobel committee added.
Justice Pillay was also chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that found last year that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
Ironically, Justice Pillay received news of the prize while she was attending a legal conference in the building in Nuremberg, Germany, where the first international criminal tribunal was set up in 1945-1946 to judge the crimes of the Nazis.
“The last thing I did is the delivery of the report on Gaza, naming what’s happening there as genocide,” Justice Pillay told a crowd gathering to celebrate the award, a video posted on social media by the head of rights group Amnesty International showed.
“If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” she added, to laughter, in a likely reference to the decision by last year’s winner, Maria Corina Machado, to give her Nobel medal to the US president in January to help gain support for her campaign for a democratic Venezuela.
Justice Pillay later dedicated the award to “all the survivors of international crimes as well as to practitioners and defenders of international justice whose compassion and courage continue to ensure that impunity will not be allowed to reign”.
Turning her attention to world leaders, she told them: “You are under legal obligation … to protect human rights and refrain from war”.
Justice Pillay visited Guyana in July of 2016 and urged the removal of the death penalty.
“The concern is you don’t pass a law just because something terrible has happened. Law is not done emotionally. The rule of law follows international standards and Guyana is very much a part of the international community… and so they have vowed to pass laws that are certain and definite and not responding each time there is a terrorism act committed…,” she said.
She also told reporters that the UN had very specific requirements for counter-terrorism measures. “It must still comply with international humanitarian law so we will add our voice to ask Guyana to advance forward and not to go backward. We are very aware that this country has made many advances. This country should be very proud that for 20 years there has been no execution there has been a moratorium… Internationally and in the United Nations almost 160 countries have signed up either to a moratorium or abolition and that is what we want, as a first step, Guyana to take, is to formalise it, make it into law.”
As stated in a letter in today’s edition of Kiskadee Watch by Dr Bertrand Ramcharan, the conferring of the Nobel Peace Prize on Justice Pillay honours the entire human rights movement. It is a small ray of hope in an otherwise fraught environment. Those engaged here in the fight for human rights in many arenas including domestic violence can take heart even as they struggle to make sense of how the state has conducted itself recently in relation to cases against a Deputy Commissioner of Police and the head of the National Border Patrol unit.
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