The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Venezuela’s opposition leader and democracy activist María Corina Machado, who has been forced to live in hiding in what has become a “brutal” state, the Nobel jury said.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, revealed that Machado was honoured
for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,
Frydnes said that despite systematic suppression of the opposition through election “rigging, legal persecution and imprisonment,” María Corina Machado has remained in Venezuela, emerging as a unifying figure and a “remarkable example of civilian courage that has inspired millions.”
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump had openly expressed his hope of winning this year’s prize, citing his role in settling seven conflicts and, in his view, bringing an eighth close to resolution. On a technicality, the deadline for nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 was on January 31.
However, Nobel Prize experts in Oslo had insisted that Trump had no chance, noting that his “America First” policies run counter to the ideals of the Peace Prize as laid out in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will establishing the award.
