Navi Pillay

Biography

South African jurist Dr Navi Pillay has been elected President of the Advisory Council of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy in 2017. She served as the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations from 2008 to 2014. Aside from that, she has championed many human rights issues with which she herself had direct experience, having grown up as a member of the non-white majority under the Apartheid regime in South Africa. After studying law in Natal, she worked on behalf of the victims of racial segregation as a criminal defence lawyer and as an activist for the anti-Apartheid movement. Later, Dr Pillay earned a master’s degree under a graduate program at Harvard Law School. In 1988, she became the first South African to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Juridical Science at Harvard Law School. In 1995, after the end of Apartheid, Dr Pillay was appointed to the Supreme Court of South Africa as a limited-term judge. In the same year, she was appointed as a judge to the International Court for Rwanda, where she served for a total of eight years, including four years as President. Later she served on the International Criminal Court in Den Haag for five years. Dr Pillay plays an active role in numerous human rights organisations. Among other roles, she is the co-founder of "Equality Now", an international women’s rights organisation.