Trump once again denied the prize he covets most

Donald Trump has once again been passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize. This year’s winner has spent her career at the kind of institution he’s trying to tear down.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the 2026 prize on Friday to Navi Pillay, Reuters reported. Pillay is an 85-year-old South African jurist and a former judge at the International Criminal Court. The committee honored her “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.”

“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack,” the 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.”

Trump has made his campaign against the ICC no secret. Last month he urged countries to leave the court, Reuters reported. His administration has already sanctioned several of its prosecutors and judges, and sources told Reuters it is considering wider sanctions.

Pillay also chaired the U.N. commission of inquiry that concluded last year that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Israel called the report “scandalous.” Earlier in her career, she defended Nelson Mandela and other opponents of apartheid.

The president has long said he deserves the prize. He told the U.N. General Assembly last month that it had been his “great honor to settle eight wars.”

The committee wasn’t directly rebuking Trump, according to Haakon Gjerloew, acting director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

“Of course, he might react to someone who has been part of the ICC,” Gjerloew told Reuters, “but it’s not a direct attack on Trump.”

Last year’s prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.