GROUNDBREAKING
She grew up in a poor neighbourhood in the southeastern coastal city during white minority rule, and studied law at the University of Natal before attaining a Master’s and Doctorate from Harvard.
She became the first non-white woman to open a law firm in Durban where she carved out a reputation as a doughty defender of apartheid opponents.
In 1973 she won the right for political prisoners in the notorious Robben Island penal colony – where jailed anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was held at the time – to have access to lawyers.
A year after Mandela became president in South Africa’s first democratic vote in 1994, she made legal history by becoming the first woman of colour to be appointed to the country’s high court.
Soon after, the late liberation hero recommended her to serve on a United Nations tribunal trying Rwandan genocide suspects.
In 1998, she was among judges on the Rwanda tribunal that was the first try rape as an act of genocide.
Ten years later, Pillay was appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a role she held until 2014.
