The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the South African legal pioneer Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for defending international law and institutions in a world in which increasingly “might overtakes right.”

Pillay, 85, has a decadeslong career that spans defending Nelson Mandela and standing up against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, to leading a United Nations commission that concluded Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Navi Pillay is one of the great defenders of international legal principles in our time,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Using the award to make a wider point about geopolitics, Frydnes contrasted Pillay’s work with the wider international “shift towards power politics,” in which “international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack.”

Her “distinguished career reminds us of the need to support, fortify and expand the global rule of law,” he said. “Navi Pillay’s commitment to justice and human dignity is a source of hope and inspiration to all who seek to bring about a more peaceful world.”

Pillay learned of her prize at the Nuremberg Forum, an international law gathering in Germany. She told an applauding crowd, “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” prompting laughter.

That was a reference to President Donald Trump’s long-standing ambitions to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and the offer by last year’s winner, Maria Corina Machado, to share it with him as she sought support for her efforts in Venezuela.

“Everybody asks me: ‘When are you going to stop? When are you going to stop?’” Pillay said, adding that despite turning 85 last month, she had no intention of doing so.

“The last thing I did was the report on Gaza, namely what’s happening there is genocide,” she said to cheers.

“One of the main reactions to that report was paying tribute to me for my courage,” she added. “But why would you need courage to speak the truth? You interpret the law and you look at all the facts.”

Having just been told the news, she added jokingly, “Being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.”

Among her many positions, Pillay has been a judge on the International Criminal Court

Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, was in Germany and among the first people to tell Pillay she had won.

“This could not be a better choice at a time of attacks against international justice,” Callamard told NBC News. “She is a former ICC judge at a time when the U.S. administration is seeking to destroy the ICC” and she led the U.N. commission “which found that Israel committed the crime of genocide at a time when many states are trying to defend and protect Israel’s actions.”

Pillay was not among the front-runners, who included Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of anti-Kremlin figure Alexei Navalny, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, and Mykola Kuleba, who founded an organization to rescue Ukrainian children abducted and forcibly taken to Russia.

Trump was among the 287 candidates, according to the leaders of Israel, Pakistan and Cambodia, who said they nominated him. But Trump said this week he didn’t think he would win.

“I don’t know what their decision is going to be,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me.”