By US President Donald Trump has lashed out at the Norwegian Nobel Committee within hours of its decision to give the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay, insisting the award should have gone to him and warning Norway that Washington will not forget.
Speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York, on Friday evening, Trump said he had never heard of the 85-year-old laureate and called the decision disgraceful and embarrassing. He said it left an “indelible stain” on Norway and claimed a handful of radical ideologues had discredited the prize for good. He followed with social media posts on Friday and Saturday, in one of which he accused Pillay of hating Israel, according to The Hill and The Washington Post.
The decision in Oslo
The committee announced the award on Friday, October 9, citing Pillay’s efforts to promote peace and international law. It said she had shown exceptional courage and integrity and had been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
Pillay is a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and a former judge of the International Criminal Court. She also led the Rwanda genocide tribunal. She began as a lawyer defending apartheid opponents and was the first non-white woman in South Africa to open her own law practice, The Hill reported. She chaired the UN inquiry that found Israel committed genocide in Gaza, which is central to Trump’s objection.
She dedicated the prize to survivors of international crimes and said it strengthened her conviction that the world must defend the rule of law and independent courts. UN Secretary-General António Guterres praised her, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa congratulated her.
Trump’s response
Trump described the winner as a “mystery person” and said he wished her congratulations anyway. He then said the United States, represented by him, should have received the prize. He closed the Syracuse remarks by saying “we will not forget, Norway.”
Pillay’s own reaction was lighter. Addressing a crowd after the announcement, she joked that she might share the prize with Trump if the applause continued. The remark appeared to reference Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who gave Trump her 2025 medal.
How the dispute built up
Trump has openly wanted the prize since returning to the White House in January 2025. When Machado won in October 2025, the White House accused the committee of putting politics over peace, as Fortune reported. In January 2026 Machado presented Trump with her gold medal. The committee responded that the prize cannot be transferred, shared or revoked, according to Reuters.
Days later, Trump wrote to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, saying he no longer felt obliged to think purely of peace because Norway had not given him the prize. He repeated his demand for control of Greenland in the same message. Støre replied that an independent committee, not the Norwegian government, awards the prize.
Ahead of this year’s announcement, experts in Oslo had said Trump’s war against Iran, his territorial ambitions including Greenland, hard-line immigration policies and attacks on multilateralism and the media damaged his chances, according to AFP. After the decision, Haakon Gjerloew, acting director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, told ABC News the committee was not directly criticising Trump. He called the choice a promotion of an international legal order.
The ICC link
Trump’s outburst came as his administration imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court, hours after the award, RTE reported. Washington has targeted the court for its arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a former defence minister, and for an earlier probe into US troops in Afghanistan. In August it sanctioned the court’s president, Tomoko Akane, and a senior trial lawyer, Abdoulaye Seye, Reuters reported. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called the court politicised.
What it means for Africa
The prize goes to an African jurist known for pursuing accountability after the Rwanda genocide and for defending the continent’s apartheid victims. The row now pits a US administration hostile to international courts against a committee that has chosen the law as its theme.
Source note. This report draws on the Nobel Committee’s announcement, AFP, CNBC, The Washington Post, The Hill, RTE, ABC News, Reuters, Fortune and Al Jazeera.
