Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, big gains for French student protesters, and Ethiopia’s war allegations against Eritrea.

‘Peace Requires Justice’

The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist who has been involved in some of the biggest human rights cases of the modern day during her decades-long career. Yet granting the world’s greatest peace-building accolade to Pillay has drawn heavy criticism from Israel and the United States, which denounced her role on a United Nations panel that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, big gains for French student protesters, and Ethiopia’s war allegations against Eritrea.

‘Peace Requires Justice’

The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist who has been involved in some of the biggest human rights cases of the modern day during her decades-long career. Yet granting the world’s greatest peace-building accolade to Pillay has drawn heavy criticism from Israel and the United States, which denounced her role on a United Nations panel that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

Pillay, 85, began her career as a lawyer focused on segregation and exclusion; among her biggest cases, she helped defend then-imprisoned anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. She went on to serve as a judge on South Africa’s High Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court and held the role of U.N. high commissioner for human rights. Today, she sits as a judge on the International Court of Justice in a case accusing Myanmar of genocide.

Her most controversial work, though, is among her most recent. Last year, Pillay led a team of independent experts to determine whether Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. The team’s conclusion: “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.” The commission also found that “responsibility for the atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons.”

Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation and denounced its results. The United States followed suit, with Washington pulling out of the U.N. Human Rights Council in response; Pillay’s team was commissioned by the council.

Since then, both Israel........

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