Getting your player ready...
UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will name South African judge Navanethem Pillay as the next U.N. human- rights commissioner as early as today, according to U.N. officials.
The daughter of a Tamil bus driver in Durban, Pillay earned a law degree at Harvard University but was not allowed to set foot in a judge’s chambers for 28 years as a lawyer under apartheid because of her South Asian origins. In 1995, she became the first woman of color to become a judge on the South African High Court.
Pillay also served on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try crimes after the genocide in 1994 and has served for five years on the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
She would replace Canadian judge Louise Arbour.
