The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Machado, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 following her struggle to promote democratic rights in her country.
Machado, an industrial engineer who has been hiding in her country, was blocked by Venezuela’s courts from running for president against the incumbent President, Nicolas Maduro, in the 2024 elections.
Announcing the 58-year-old female politician as the winner on Friday in Oslo, the Norwegian Nobel Committee described her as a dogged fighter.
“She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize 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”.
Hailing Machado as one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America, they added that Machado had been a “key unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided – an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government”.
The director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Kristian Berg Harpviken, who announced the winner to the Venezuelan, was emotional while informing her, and his voice broke as he performed the task.
Machado, after receiving the news, said, “Oh my God. I have no words. This is an achievement of a whole society. I am just one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”
Machado says she thinks it will take a while to believe the news, and commended the committee for the honour.
Meanwhile, the lead-up to this year’s award had been dominated by United States President Donald Trump’s repeated self-aggrandising public statements that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The committee, meanwhile, took its final decision just before an Israel-Hamas ceasefire comes into effect in Gaza under the first phase of Trump’s initiative to end the war.
“The president “has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will”.
Trump had been gunning to win the award, and many of his supporters campaigned alongside him, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do, really, but I know this: that nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months, and I’ve stopped eight wars,” Trump said on Thursday. “So that’s never happened before, but they’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives.”
The President was alluding to the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, which saw him intervene with bunker buster bombs on Iranian nuclear sites, as well as conflicts and tensions of varying levels of intensity, not all of which classify as wars, between India and Pakistan, DR Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.
Machado ran as the democratic opposition candidate in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election but was disqualified by Maduro’s government and went on to support the opposition’s alternative candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Maduro won re-election that year with 51 percent of the vote – his third win since he first took over as president in 2013 after the death of his mentor, former President Hugo Chavez.
But the opposition said the results were rigged, claiming Maduro had only won 30 percent of the vote and that Gonzalez was the real victor.
The opposition received global support when it publicised vote counts collected from the country’s election districts, showing that the opposition had won by a clear margin.
Protests erupted, demanding the release of election results by individual polling stations, and Maduro’s government responded with a brutal crackdown on opposition protesters and leaders.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, praised Machado’s decision to remain in her country, having been “forced to live in hiding” after “serious threats against her life”. Her choice, he said, had “inspired millions”.
“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” he said.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) congratulated Machado. “This recognition reflects the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections, for civil and political rights and for the rule of law,” said OHCHR spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan.
