VG spoke to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Navi Pillay on the phone. Much of what she says goes unchallenged.
There’s plenty to get to.
Let’s start with the errors.
VG states that Pillay was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. A few paragraphs further down, she mentions knowing Norway from her time as High Commissioner ‘in the early 2000s’. Both statements appear in the same article.
She is referred to as a judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This is correct, but only as an ad hoc judge in a single case. The Gambia appointed her to the case against Myanmar. She does not hold a permanent seat amongst the Court’s fifteen judges.
She then goes on to say she will take the award with her into “my future work at the ICC”. VG’s own fact box states that she left the ICC in 2008.
She also believes that a film will be important for “the ICJ’s investigation in Gaza”. The ICJ is a court that adjudicates cases between states. It does not conduct investigations in the same way as the ICC. No one is stopping her.
Then there’s Trump.
VG reports that he has not provided any evidence to show that he has ended eight wars. Exactly how many wars are being referred to is open to debate. But the agreements do exist.
The ceasefire in Gaza is based on Trump’s 20-point plan. Hamas released the 20 hostages who were still alive, and Trump addressed the Knesset on 13 October 2025. Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a joint declaration for peace at the White House on 8 August 2025. Congo and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington on 4 December 2025.
VG makes no mention of any of these agreements.
The sanctions against the ICC came hours after the prize was announced. The timing could make it appear to be a reaction to the prize. US officials say the timing was coincidental, and that the sanctions had been in the works for several months, according to ITV. The US had also previously imposed sanctions on ICC judges and prosecutors, following the court’s issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. VG readers are not told this.
Then comes the story that VG glosses over.
Netanyahu calls Pillay prejudiced against Jews. VG reports this in a single line, according to AFP. The Prime Minister’s Office wrote on X that she has built her career on spreading blood libels against the Jewish state. Pillay responds that the criticism is ‘hurtful’. The interview then continues.
The article does not state what the accusation of prejudice against Jews is based on. Here is some of it.
In July 2022, Commission member Miloon Kothari said in a podcast that social media is largely controlled by the Jewish lobby or certain organisations. Several countries condemned the statement, including the US. Pillay, who chaired the commission, wrote in a letter on 28 July that he had been misquoted. The following week, Kothari himself apologised. He wrote that it was completely wrong to say that.
In February 2022, Israel stated that it would not cooperate with the commission. Israel’s ambassador in Geneva wrote to Pillay stating that she supports the BDS boycott campaign against Israel. The letter also described the comparison of Israel to apartheid-era South Africa as a shameful smear. This is Israel’s justification, and VG makes no mention of it.
Instead, VG quotes Pillay as saying that she had expected criticism from institutions familiar with international law, but that none came. The criticism did come. Israel rejected the report as distorted and false and demanded that the commission be dissolved, according to JusticeInfo. VG itself reports that Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted strongly.
She also says that the process “resembled a court case”. The commission is not a court of law. And in a court case, both sides are heard. Israel refused to cooperate with the commission as early as 2022.
The four-point summary does not mention Israel at all.
Then there is the Nobel Committee.
Pillay says that the committee is independent. The five-member committee is elected by the Storting, and its composition reflects the political parties’ strength. The Labour Party appointed Gry Larsen as a new member in 2023.
Moreover, the committee has been in this position before. In 1994, Kåre Kristiansen resigned from the committee in protest against Yasir Arafat being awarded the prize. Kristiansen was a member of the Christian Democratic Party (KrF). He believed that he could not, in good conscience, award the Nobel Prize to a man with a record of terrorist acts.
And in January, the committee’s own secretary, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told Reuters that last year’s winner had probably been revealed through digital espionage. Large sums were bet on María Corina Machado hours before the announcement. The committee said it had been unable to establish what had happened.
The prize will be awarded on 10 December at Oslo City Hall. Then, perhaps, someone can ask the questions that VG forgot.
