Navanethem Pillay

Navanethem Pillay (2009)

Navanethem Pillay (born September 23, 1941 in Durban ) is a South African lawyer. From 2003 to 2008 she was a judge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague . From 2008 to 2014 she served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights .

Life

family

Navanethem Pillay, called "Navi" Pillay, comes from a Tamil family who belonged to the South African minority group of people of Indian origin . Her grandparents who immigrated from India came as contract workers for a sugar cane plantation . Her father was a bus driver and her mother a housewife. The parents, who were born in South Africa, lived with their four daughters in Clairwood , a poor district not far from the port , which at the time was allocated to members of the Asian minorities due to the apartheid policy of South Africa . Atypical for the time, the parents encouraged their children's development for their later career as lawyers and headmasters. Pillay is now widowed and has two daughters.

First degree in South Africa

Pillay initially studied law at the Law School of the University of Natal , but in a separate building complex based on racist motives, a potato warehouse, far away from the main Durban campus of the university in Howard College . She encountered study conditions of below average level. She had received an amount of money earmarked for textbooks from the South African Jewish Women's Union as a reward for a school essay at the age of 15 in which she expressed the opinion, which was extraordinary at the time, that it was the job of women in South Africa to give the children a right one To convey attitudes towards human rights. Her student work received attention in the regional press. The student, who was recognized as talented, obtained her start-up capital for her studies through a fundraising campaign at her school in Clairwood , which was supplemented by further donations from the City Council in Durban and a scholarship from the university to reduce fees. Your university was one of the three Open Universities in South Africa at which non-Europeans could be admitted to study; but the legal situation at the time restricted this possibility. The Separate Universities Act of 1959 forced her to complete her LL.B. -To continue studies at the University College for Indians at the Salisbury Island Naval Base in the port area. The head of administration at her university expressed concerns about her desired law degree because in what was then South Africa it was forbidden for a non-white lawyer to give instructions to white employees, and so she would later not find admission to the bar. Many of the law firms she asked for refused.

In the university library she also read transcripts of the Nuremberg trials after the end of the “Third Reich”. She adopted the principle applied in the indictments there, not a collective but rather the individual, for war crimes and crimes against humanity . She completed her studies with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law (LL.B.).

Lawyer during apartheid

1967 opened Pillay as the first non-white woman in the province of Natal own law firm as a lawyer because she got because of their skin color no job at a law firm. At the time, the judiciary was dominated by whites, especially men. Among other things, non-white lawyers were not allowed to enter the judges' room at the time; therefore she was denied the judge's career for 28 years.

Pillay has served as a criminal defense attorney for many segregation and anti-apartheid activists, including her own husband, who was held in solitary confinement for five months , as well as trade unionists and women's rights activists. Pillay has defended a number of precedent lawsuits on the effects of solitary confinement (she argued that solitary confinement used negatively affects the reliability of testimony), the right of political prisoners to a fair trial (she criticized unlawful methods of questioning) and intra-familial detention Violence. In 1973, an appeal by her against the head of the Robben Island penitentiary was successful, giving political prisoners - including Nelson Mandela - access to lawyers.

Like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other human rights activists, she was put on a state security list as a threat to the state because of her commitment. For years, Pillay's passport was revoked because of her work.

Harvard graduate and judge at the South African Supreme Court

At the end of the 1970s she became aware of the fact that her training under apartheid meant a career obstacle because she had no knowledge of essential parts of international law in South Africa . A turning point in her career became apparent when Pillay for a graduate program at the Harvard Law School has been approved in the US, where she in 1982 a Master reached Accounts and then in 1988 - the first non-white South African - the Doctor of Law ( Doctor of Juridical Science ). She wrote her doctoral thesis on the difficulties of achieving justice when law is abused as an instrument of politics in a state.

This degree from the elite Harvard University enabled her to return to South Africa with greater prestige in the judiciary. In the 1980s (from 1980) Pillay held a teaching position at the University of KwaZulu-Natal . In 1992 she was one of the co-founders of the international women's rights organization Equality Now (immediate equality) together with the American Jessica Neuwirth , where she campaigned for the anchoring of freedom and civil rights in the constitution of South Africa; from 1992 to 1995 she was the organisation's board member. In 1995, shortly after the end of racial segregation, Pillay was appointed as the first non-white and first woman to be a judge at the Supreme Court of South Africa.

Between 1995 and 1998 she also served in other public functions: as trustee of the Legal Resources Center (a non-governmental legal aid organization) and as Vice President of the University of Durban-Westville (part of what is now the University of KwaZulu-Natal ). She also helped - as part of the National Economic Initiative initiated by President Nelson Mandela in 1995 , today the National Business Initiative - to found Nozala Investments , a regional partner organization of the WBCSD , to promote women economically .

Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

A few months later (still in 1995) she was seconded - also here as the first and then only woman - as a judge in the Prosecution Department at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) based in Arusha (Tanzania), which was newly established to deal with the genocide of 1994 . The decisions of the Rwanda Tribunal made with their substantial involvement include three groundbreaking judgments for international criminal law :

• Jean-Paul Akayesu, Mayor of the Rwandan municipality of Taba , was found guilty of genocide as the first person ever convicted by an international criminal court (for details see: Akayesu judgment ). The meaning of the verdict lies in the fact that it represents the world's first conviction for genocide - on the basis of a UN Convention adopted in 1948 - and for the first time recognizes rape during armed conflict as a crime against humanity and a weapon of war that - if it is systematically linked to the The aim of exterminating a certain population group can be applied - in addition, they are also classified as acts of genocide.
• Jean Kambanda , the former Prime Minister of Rwanda, was found guilty of genocide as the first ever head of government.
• Three Rwandans were convicted of using the mass media to incite genocide.

In 1999 she became President of the Court of Justice. She held this office until 2003. Her successor was the Norwegian Erik Møse .

Judge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague

In 2003 Pillay was elected judge of the Appeals Chamber at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for a six-year term on the proposal of the African group of states by the contracting states of the Rome Statute . Your appointment is noteworthy in that, until then, this court has only dealt with cases from Africa.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

In July 2008 she was proposed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for the position of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) and on July 28 her appointment was unanimously confirmed by the UN General Assembly . She took office on September 1, 2008. She is the successor of the Canadian Louise Arbor , who was not available again at the end of her term at the end of June 2008, so that the office remained vacant for a few months.

In the run-up to Pillay's appointment, there were reservations, especially from the USA, according to UN diplomats. Among other things, Pillay's commitment to the right to abortion was criticized , and there were also fears that, because of her origin, she would support the South African President Thabo Mbeki's policy towards Zimbabwe , which the US has rejected . Some human rights organizations, such as B. UN Watch , initially expressed concerns on the latter point. They were skeptical as to whether Pillay would appear as aggressively as its predecessor and whether it would act intensively enough against serious human rights violations.

In early December 2010, the Chinese dissident Yang Jianli accused her of giving in to pressure from China when she canceled her participation in the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for Liu Xiaobo due to scheduling problems.

In 2011, Pillay sat on a jury consisting of renowned personalities who were involved in the selection of the universal logo for human rights . In 2014 she presented her report on privacy in the digital age and criticized the fact that state mass surveillance violates human rights.

In light of the fighting over the Hamas tunnels during the Israeli military offensive in Gaza from July 8 to August 26, 2014, Pillay saw "signs of war crimes by the Israeli army". Since children have been killed and civilian houses have been attacked, it is "very likely that international law will be violated". Pillay also condemned Hamas “indiscriminately firing rockets and mortar shells at Israeli settlements”.

Publications

• Law and economic change in Africa: change through trade unions in South Africa , Harvard Law School, 1982
• B. Muna, N. Pillay, T. Rudasingwa: The Rwanda Tribunal and its Relationship to National Trials in Rwanda . American University International Law Review, 13, pp. 1469ff., 1997
• The accountability of those in leadership for human rights violations - the experience of the ICTR . Dublin: Trinity College School of Law, 2000
• International criminal tribunals as a deterrent to displacement , In: AF Bayefski, J. Fitzpatrick (Ed.): Human Rights and Forced Displacement , Kluwer Law International, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2000, pp. 262-266, ISBN 90-411-1518 -8th
• Sexual Violence in Times of Conflict: The Jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda . In: Simon Chesterman, International Peace Academy (ed.): Civilians in war . Pp. 165ff., Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, Colorado (USA) 2001, ISBN 1-55587-965-9
• The rule of international humanitarian jurisprudence in redressing crimes of sexual violence . In: Man's inhumanity to man . The Hague [u. a.]: Kluwer Law International, 2003, pp. 685-692, ISBN 90-411-1986-8
• BORN FREE AND EQUAL - Sexual orientation and gender identity in international human rights law (PDF; 1.7 MB), OHCHR, 2012
• The right to privacy in the digital age . Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2014.

Memberships

Pillay was a member and has held senior positions with many organizations, including the Association of Black Lawyers (Black Lawyers Association), the Women's National Coalition (South African women's organization), the Women Lawyers Association (lawyers association), the Advice desk for Abused Women (counseling center for raped Women) and the Lawyers for Human Rights .

Honors

• In 2003 she was the first to receive the Women's Rights Prize of the American Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation , of which she is a member of the advisory board, for her commitment to human and especially women 's rights .
• In the same year she was made an honorary member of the American Society for International Law .
• In 2005 she received an honorary doctorate (LLD) from Rhodes University in South Africa
• In June 2007 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in civil law from the University of Durham in the UK .
• She has received other honors from the International Bar Association and the National Bar Association.
• On June 9, 2016: Honorary doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands)

literature

• Profiles: Navanethem Pillay, South Africa. Judge of the International Criminal Court. In: Daniel Terris, Cesare PR Romano, Leigh Swigart: The International Judge: An Introduction to the Men and Women Who Decide the World's Cases. Brandeis University Press, Waltham 2007, ISBN 1-58465-666-2 , pp. 39-48

Web links

Commons : Navanethem Pillay  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The Rule of Law and the Role of the Individual in the Pursuit of Human Rights , speech to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung on May 20, 2003, on the occasion of the awarding of the Foundation's Human Rights Prize to the Rwanda Tribunal (English)
• Tagesschau.de: UN Human Rights Commission: South African Pillay appointed ( Memento from September 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), September 2, 2008.

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b} Christof Heyns: Interview with Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights . In: South African Yearbook of International Law (2012) Vol. 37, pp. 9–21, ISSN  0379-8895 (PDF; 132 kB)
2. ↑ https://today.law.harvard.edu/judge-human-rights/
3. ↑ google.com/hostednews ( Memento from January 25, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Pillay criticized for rejection of Nobel ceremony , AFP, December 6, 2010
4. ↑ The jury  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14874&LangID=E
6. ↑ Die Zeit , 07, 2014 : “The UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay announced that she saw signs of war crimes by the Israeli army. The fact that children are killed and Palestinian houses destroyed makes it very likely that international law will be violated, Pillay said. She also condemned Hamas indiscriminately firing rockets and mortar shells at Israeli settlements. "
7. ↑ http://www.eur.nl/mandeville/home