Navi Pillay

Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, born in Durban, South Africa, in 1941, is a lawyer. She received her doctorate from Harvard University in 1988. Pillay was the first non-white woman to open a law firm in South Africa. As a defence lawyer, she represented several victims of so-called racial segregation and activists of the anti-apartheid movement. In 1995, she was appointed judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and participated in several landmark international criminal law judgments. From 2003 to 2008, she was a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. From 2008 to 2014, she served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Pillay lives in Durban.