PAM FRAMPTON: Trump’s petulance about peace prize speaks volumes

He likes renaming bodies of water and adding his own name to buildings.

She calls out and names injustice.

He is morally bankrupt.

She has been lauded for her firm moral compass.

He has pardoned people who have committed war crimes.

She has spent her long and distinguished career investigating war crimes.

He was found liable of sexual abuse.

She helped establish that sexual violence is a crime against humanity.

He whined publicly about not being given the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was shocked to learn that she had won it and was given a standing ovation.

He is U.S. President Donald Trump.

She is Navanethem (Navi) Pillay, of whom Trump has said, “This is the woman who received the Nobel Peace Prize over the Great United States of America, whose Representative, ME, settled eight Wars, and many other things. I know nothing about this woman, and neither does anyone else! … (The) Nobel Prize was given today to a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of.”

Perhaps Pillay is not a household name because she works diligently to ensure that international laws are upheld rather than spending her time self-aggrandizing and promoting her own personal brand.

Maybe she would actually rather accomplish something than brag about her accomplishments.

But she should be a household name because her efforts have helped change the world — for the better.

A pioneer on many fronts, she is of Indian ancestry, born in South Africa under apartheid.

As a woman of colour, she was highly disadvantaged by that racist policy, but it inspired what would become her lifelong fight against injustice.

She became the first woman in her province to start her own law firm and later was the first woman of colour appointed to the High Court of South Africa — tapped by then-president Nelson Mandela, whom Pillay had defended decades before, along with other anti-apartheid activists, as a human rights lawyer.

Pillay later presided over the International Criminal Tribunal, which prosecuted those involved in the Rwandan genocide. A former prosecutor on that tribunal, Stephen Rapp, praised Pillay’s work in an interview with PBS after she was announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rapp recalled how Pillay was instrumental in establishing that rape was a crime against humanity.

“And she also found that rape was a way in which genocide was committed because of the way in which it inflicted serious mental and physical harm on women with the intent to destroy the whole group, because, before her, frankly, the attitude was that women and often children and girls were collateral damage and conflict, and that women’s bodies were the reward for brave soldiers,” he said.

“And we didn’t have the crime even talked about. And, finally, because of her, we had convictions. And since then, we have a global movement to stop this scourge against women and girls. And so that’s — for that, she’s entitled to the Nobel Prize alone. But that was something she accomplished back in 1998. And, since then, she’s accomplished so much more.”

Pillay has also been United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and she chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The BBC reported that Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, said that Pillay has “looked the brutality of injustice in the eye and never looked away” and that, “In a world that needs justice more than ever, her courage and moral clarity are a precious compass.”

“I never heard of the person,” Trump said. “Nobody did.”

Perhaps the president should stop his petulant social media posts long enough to do some reading, because it doesn’t take long to discover why Pillay is held in high regard in many circles, and her accomplishments — unlike his — are easily verified.

Always the competitive schoolyard bully, vainglorious Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize because Barack Obama has one. It’s as simple as that.

Trump calls the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s decision to overlook him for the prize “an indelible stain on Norway, one that will never be forgotten.”

Awarding a peace prize to Trump — who used his address to the United Nations last month to threaten to “annihilate Iran” — would create a far bigger stain and strip the prize of all credibility.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com | X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social