‘...ignorant’: When Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay criticised Donald Trump

South African judge Navanethem ‘Navi’ Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims for the coveted award. What must have made the snub particularly unpleasant for Trump – who was hoping for the second consecutive year to win the award – is that Pillay had, last year, called him “woefully ignorant of international law”. This is in sharp contrast to Trump’s subsequent pitch for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In February last year when Trump had planned to take over the Gaza Strip, send the Palestinians away, and redevelop the land as the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’, Pillay had said this amounted to ethnic cleansing.

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“Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing,” Navi Pillay had said. “There is no way under the law that Trump could carry out the threat to dislocate Palestinians from their land,” she added.

The 85-year-old former judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had also slammed Trump for imposing sanctions on the ICC. “International law applies equally, without double standards for a state’s friends,” Pillay had said.

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Pillay’s commission had accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity through the targeted destruction of Gaza’s health system.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee called Navi Pillay a “driving force in the development of an international system of law and order”. “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,” it said.

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Meanwhile, Trump had indicated two days ago that he hoped to win it but knew he wasn’t going to. "I don't know what their decision is going to be. They have a ​reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me,” he said, claiming that he has resolved eight wars since taking office last January.

The leaders of Cambodia, Israel and Pakistan had nominated Trump for the award even though he was not the clear favourite to win the award. He had also promised to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war which has still eluded him.