A Life in the Service of Justice and Human Dignity
On 6 November 2025, Judge Navi Pillay received the 2025 Sydney Peace Prize. This is her full address.
I would like to acknowledge that we are gathering on Gadigal land, and I pay my respects to elders past and present. I was here in Australia about 15 years ago, as High Commissioner for Human Rights, leading a UN delegation here, and I dutifully made these acknowledgements in every one of my speeches, so I’m really wondering why you haven’t gone further than a mere acknowledgement.
I salute the state of Victoria, who have drawn a treaty, and I hope that it will be national soon. I am so much into International Criminal Court, dare I mention that what you are acknowledging is an international crime.
But standing here today, I am reminded how improbable this journey of mine has been – from the dusty streets of apartheid-era Durban to the halls of the United Nations in Geneva and to this hall and the award. My story, in truth, is not only my own. It belongs to all those who believed that the law, even in the darkest times, could be used as a beacon of hope.
I was born (you know it’s in my speech, my daughter put it in here, so I have to give you the age then) I was born in 1941 in segregated South Africa, the daughter of Indian-Tamil parents who worked tirelessly so that their children could have an education. My grandparents were brought by the British as indentured labourers to work in the sugar cane fields. As you know, Mahatma Gandhi called their conditions of labour semi slavery. But what I want to stress is that within three generations, there’s the grandparents who were labourers; the next generation, my parents, had jobs- my father was a bus driver; my mother a homemaker. We did not have much, but we had values: dignity, faith in education, and the conviction that every person, no matter their colour or gender, deserves a chance. So, I credit that community of very poor indentured labourers, who thought of building their own schools, so that within three generations you have this dramatic change. In my own family we have two judges and two school principals.
Under apartheid, that belief of discrimination was radical. The system told us, every day, that we were less than others. Schools were inferior, opportunities limited, and our very movement controlled. I grew up watching my parents and neighbours live with quiet resilience, even as laws denied us basic rights.