Navi Pillay

Her grandparents came from India as indentured servants to work on South African sugar plantations in Natal in the 1890s.

Her parents had an arranged marriage during their early teens and had 8 children, the fifth being Pillay.

Narriansamy was a bus-driver by trade and took up other jobs such as fishing to supplement their income while Santhama was a homemaker.

The two raised their family with strong Hindu values, emphasizing equality between the men and women in the family.

While most of Pillay's counterparts during elementary school were married off, her parents insisted she and her two other sisters attend school like their brothers.

At the time, there were more children in South Africa than there were spots in schools.

Adamant on ensuring education for all her children, Pillay's mother would wait in long admission lines, using the birth certificates of her older children to get her younger children into school.

With limited money for school supplies, Santhama Pillay would stitch together notebooks for her younger children, using blank pages from the used notebooks of her elder children.

In school, Pillay experienced an environment completely different than her home life, learning a new religion in a new language.

Despite their personal beliefs, teachers were strictly prohibited from addressing politics, including apartheid, out of fear that the school administration would retaliate.

Pillay had her first encounter with the law when she was five years old and testified in court after being robbed of 5 pounds.

Her mother had given her the money to give to her father as these were his wages for the month.

While the subject was convicted, the court did not return the money to her father.

Pillay received many accolades for her writing during her early childhood.

When she was 10 years old, Pillay wrote an in-class essay on how black individuals received heavier sentences than their white counterparts in South African courts using information she had overheard from her parents and teachers since she could not access radios or newspapers.

At age 14, Pillay submitted an essay on why South Africans should buy South-African made commerce to a competition held by the Durban Chamber of Commerce, later receiving a bronze medal for her work.

At 15, Pillay published an essay on the role of women in instilling values in children which earned her an award of books from the Jewish Women's Union.

Navanethem "Navi" Pillay (born 23 September 1941) is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.

A South African of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay was the first non-white woman judge of the High Court of South Africa.

She has also served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Navanetham Nadoo was born to Narrainsamy Nadoo and Santhama Nadoo in 1941 in a poor neighborhood of Durban, Natal Province, Union of South Africa of Indian Tamil descent.

Pillay was born and raised in Durban, South Africa where she later attended the University of Natal, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and her Bachelor of Law in 1965.

After university, Pillay pursued a career as an attorney and served under criminal defense attorney N.T. Naicker, joining the legal defense against apartheid.

Supported by donations from the local Indian community, she graduated from the University of Natal with a BA in 1963 and an LLB in 1965.

She was sponsored by the citizens of Clairwood, the Durban City Council, and a scholarship from the university.

During her years at the University of Natal, the campus was extremely politically active.

Most classes and graduations were segregated which infuriated many students on campus.

In 1967, Pillay started her own law firm and became the first woman to do so in her home province of Natal.

In 1981, Pillay applied to and attended Harvard University under the foreign exchange Harvard-South Africa Scholarship Program and earned her Master of Law.

In 1988, she completed her thesis and graduated from Harvard Law School with a Doctorate of Jurisprudence.

Pillay was nominated and confirmed to the High Court of South Africa by the Judicial Service Commission under supervision of the bar association in 1995.

Towards the end of her term, the Minister of Justice Abdullah Omar and President Mandela submitted her name as a nominee for the U.N. Security Council and a judge on the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1995.

Between 1999 and 2003, Pillay served on the ICTR and was elected President Judge.

In 2003, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statue of the ICC elected her as a judge in the International Criminal Court and served as member of the Appeals Chamber until 2008.

Her four-year term as High Commissioner for Human Rights began on 1 September 2008 and was extended an additional two years in 2012.

In 2008, the Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed Pillay and the General Assembly of the U.N. approved her position as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

She is currently serving as an ad hoc judge of the International Court of Justice on The Gambia v Myanmar. In addition, she is the Chair of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty in Madrid, the President of the Advisory Council of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, and the Chair of the Quasi-Judicial Inquiry into Detention in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In September 2014 Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad succeeded her in her position as High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In April 2015, Pillay became the 16th Commissioner of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty.

She is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.