53 Facts About Navi Pillay

Navanethem "Navi" Pillay was born on 23 September 1941 and is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.

Navi Pillay has served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Navi Pillay is one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.

Navi Pillay was born and raised in Durban, South Africa where she later attended the University of Natal, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and her Bachelor of Law in 1965.

In 1967, Navi Pillay started her own law firm and became the first woman to do so in her home province of Natal.

In 1981, Navi Pillay applied to and attended Harvard University under the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program and earned her Master of Law.

Navi Pillay was nominated and confirmed to the High Court of South Africa by the Judicial Service Commission under supervision of the bar association in 1995.

Between 1999 and 2003, Navi Pillay served on the ICTR and was elected President Judge.

Navi Pillay is currently serving as an ad hoc judge of the International Court of Justice on The Gambia v Myanmar.

Navi Pillay's grandparents came from India as indentured servants to work on South African sugar plantations in Natal in the 1890s.

Navi Pillay's parents had an arranged marriage during their early teens and had 8 children, the fifth being Pillay.

In school, Navi Pillay experienced an environment completely different than her home life, learning a new religion in a new language.

Navi Pillay had her first encounter with the law when she was five years old and testified in court after being robbed of 5 pounds.

Navi Pillay's mother had given her the money to give to her father as these were his wages for the month.

Navi Pillay received many accolades for her writing during her early childhood.

When she was 10 years old, Navi Pillay wrote an in-class essay on how black individuals received heavier sentences than their white counterparts in South African courts using information she had overheard from her parents and teachers since she could not access radios or newspapers.

At age 14, Navi Pillay submitted an essay on why South Africans should buy South-African made commerce to a competition held by the Durban Chamber of Commerce, later receiving a bronze medal for her work.

At 15, Navi Pillay published an essay on the role of women in instilling values in children which earned her an award of books from the Jewish Women's Union.

Navi Pillay was sponsored by the citizens of Clairwood, the Durban City Council, and a scholarship from the university.

Under apartheid, Navi Pillay was forced to share what limited resources they were given amongst all non-white students at the university.

Navi Pillay once had to share a required textbook in a non-white library with 20 of her other non-white classmates.

Navi Pillay filed for an exemption with Minister of Justice, calling the office directly after receiving no response and was then able to return to Natal where she could finish her degree.

Navi Pillay later attended Harvard Law School, obtaining an LLM in 1982 and a Doctor of Juridical Science degree in 1988.

Navi Pillay is the first South African to obtain a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School.

Navi Pillay was very involved in the anti-apartheid movement, defending political opponents of apartheid in their cases against the state for poor prison conditions and the wrongful use of torture.

Navi Pillay chose to pursue a legal career as an attorney which required two years of service as an attorney before becoming an admitted attorney.

Naiker was often under house arrest and had to rely on Navi Pillay to testify for his clients in courts.

In 1967, Navi Pillay became one of three women admitted attorneys and the first non-white woman to open her own law practice in Natal Province.

Navi Pillay says she had no other alternative: "No law firm would employ me because they said they could not have white employees taking instructions from a coloured person".

Navi Pillay helped expose the use of torture and poor conditions of political detainees.

Navi Pillay then applied to and attended Harvard University in 1981 under the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program and earned her Master of Law.

Navi Pillay co-founded the Advice Desk for the Abused and ran a shelter for victims of domestic violence.

In 1995, the year after the African National Congress came to power, Navi Pillay was nominated and confirmed to the High Court of South Africa by the President Nelson Mandela and the Judicial Service Commission under supervision of the bar association, becoming the first non-white woman to serve on the court.

Between 1999 and 2003, Navi Pillay served on the ICTR and was elected President Judge.

Navi Pillay served for eight years, including four years as president.

Navi Pillay was the only female judge for the first four years of the tribunal.

Navi Pillay served on the Prosecutor v Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, Hassan Ngeze trial regarding the role the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collins and the Kangura magazine in spreading hate propaganda against the Tutsis.

Navi 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.

Navi Pillay was nominated to serve on the International Criminal Court's Appeal Chambers by the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute on 7 February 2003.

Navi Pillay was elected to a six-year term that March, but resigned in July 2008, effective 31 August 2008, in order to take up her position with the UN.

On 24 July 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon nominated Navi Pillay to succeed Louise Arbour as High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Navi Pillay expressed concern about pressure being placed on private companies to enact a financial blockade against WikiLeaks in 2010.

Navi Pillay said such action was a violation of WikiLeaks' right to freedom of expression.

Navi Pillay voiced support for a gay rights resolution in the UNHRC, which was approved in 2011.

Navi Pillay has been serving as a judge ad hoc on The Gambia v Myanmar since 2019 for crimes of genocide.

In 2003, Navi Pillay received the inaugural Gruber Prize for Women's Rights.

Quebec official sources criticized Navi Pillay for comparing Quebec with areas known to have worse records.

Navi Pillay's call in 2012 for the suspension of sanctions against the Robert Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe was criticized by civil society groups in the country, which accused the Zimbabwean government of manipulating Navi Pillay into overlooking the human rights violations committed by the government.

In July 2022 Navi Pillay defended Miloon Kothari, a member of the Permanent United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Israel Palestine conflict who questioned Israel's right to be a UN member state and alluded to a "Jewish lobby controlling social media," which prompted condemnation by Israel, Britain and United States.

Navi Pillay claimed that Kothari's comments were taken out of context.

Navi Pillay is chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, created after the Israel-Gaza clashes of 2021.

Navi Pillay has claimed that war crimes are being committed both by Hamas and Israel in the wake of the terrorist 7 October attacks in 2023.

Navi Pillay has additionally denounced Israel's retribution for disproportionately targeting children and has been hesitant to call Israel's actions self-defense.