Nobel Peace Laureate Navi Pillay on ICC, Gaza, Rape as War Crime, Her South African Roots & Mandela

We speak with the acclaimed South African human rights lawyer and international jurist Navi Pillay, who was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Pillay has been the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and a judge at both the International Criminal Court and at an international tribunal investigating the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Most recently, she led the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry that concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Hours after Pillay was announced as winner of the Nobel Prize, the United States imposed sweeping new sanctions against the International Criminal Court.

"It's extremely shocking to me, totally unacceptable, that the United States administration can today impose sanctions against the International Criminal Court," says Pillay, speaking to Democracy Now! from The Hague.

Navi Pillay is now 85 years old. She was born into an Indian Tamil family in apartheid South Africa in 1941. The first woman to start a law practice in Natal, South Africa, in 1967, Pillay began her legal career defending anti-apartheid activists including Nelson Mandela, exposing torture, and helping establish key rights for prisoners on Robben Island. Mandela, as president, later appointed Pillay to the High Court of South Africa, making her the first woman of color on that bench.