Washington targets the court
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that President Donald Trump's administration would prohibit transactions with the ICC, describing it as a "rogue court." The administration maintains that the tribunal has exceeded its jurisdiction by pursuing cases involving countries that are not members.
The measures extend beyond earlier US sanctions against 17 ICC judges and officials to target the institution itself. According to BBC News, they prohibit US entities from transacting with the court and are intended to restrict its financial operations. Some provisions have a six-month grace period, which Washington says gives member states time to negotiate a response to its concerns.
The dispute predates Pillay's award. Washington denounced the ICC's 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over Gaza. During Trump's first presidency, it also opposed the court's investigation of US troops in Afghanistan.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the latest sanctions as "a serious blow to our collective pursuit of international criminal justice, of which the ICC is a key pillar." Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands said they "regret and strongly disagree with" the decision.
Pillay addressed the sanctions by video link at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo on Saturday, Oct. 10. Calling them "unheard of" and "unacceptable," she said judges were being sanctioned by one country "just for the judicial orders they issue." Trump had earlier labeled her selection "disgraceful and embarrassing" and an "indelible stain on the country of Norway."
A career spanning apartheid and international courts
The Norwegian Nobel Committee honored Pillay "for her efforts to promote peace and international law." At 85, she became South Africa's fifth Nobel Peace Prize laureate, joining previous recipients including Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Born in Durban to a family of Indian Tamil origin during apartheid, Pillay began her legal career confronting racial exclusion. In 1967, she became the first woman to open a law practice in Natal and the first non-white woman to serve on South Africa's High Court. Her early clients included Mandela and other opponents of apartheid.
Her judicial service has included South Africa's High Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the ICC. She also served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She now sits on the International Court of Justice in the case accusing Myanmar of genocide.
Until recently, Pillay chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. AAP reported that the commission concluded in 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Israel rejected the report as "scandalous."
The committee's defense of international law
The Nobel Committee said its choice was a reminder "that the rule of law, national and international, underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts nonviolently."
Its announcement also acknowledged unequal accountability. Looking back 125 years to the first Peace Prize, the committee said the rules-based international order "has never been perfect." Powerful states have frequently escaped responsibility, it said, while the outcomes of international legal cases have varied according to the identities of perpetrators and victims.
For Muhadi Sugiono, an international relations lecturer at Gadjah Mada University and a campaigner with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Pillay's selection illustrates how the prize can defend principles as well as honor accomplishments. Writing in The Jakarta Post, he interprets the award as support for a rules-based order at a time when power politics and unilateral action are gaining ground.
Recognition, encouragement and advocacy
Sugiono distinguishes three overlapping purposes of the Peace Prize: rewarding achievements, encouraging peace efforts and lending authority to causes under pressure. Which purpose receives the greatest emphasis depends on the circumstances the committee wants to address, he argues; these are not successive stages in the prize's history.
Awards associated with negotiated agreements illustrate the first purpose. He cites Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in 1993, and Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994.
Other selections seek to sustain a peace effort or bring international attention to movements facing state pressure and suppression. Sugiono places the 1989 award to the 14th Dalai Lama, the 1996 award to Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta, and the 1998 award to John Hume and David Trimble in this category.
The awards to Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, Andrei Sakharov in 1975 and Liu Xiaobo in 2010 demonstrate the prize's advocacy role, in his account: offering moral backing and legitimacy to people resisting authoritarian governments. He sees Pillay's selection as placing particular weight on that function.
Such choices can provoke condemnation and political resistance, especially when powerful states consider their interests threatened. Sugiono groups the reactions to Pillay with those to von Ossietzky, Sakharov and Liu. Rather than treating the backlash as evidence that the prize has lost relevance, he argues that it shows the award still carries moral authority in a divided world.
Pillay is due to receive the prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. The award carries 12 million Swedish crowns, approximately 1.7 million Australian dollars.
