This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Navi Pillay, a South African woman of Indian descent, played a key role in her home country’s anti-apartheid movement and served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. But most recently, she led the U.N. commission that concluded Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Her colleagues at the United Nations cheered Pillay’s selection. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres praised Pillay as a “steadfast, independent voice of justice.”