OSLO — Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who lives in hiding, won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her fight against dictatorship in the country.
Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer and leader of the liberal opposition party Vente Venezuela, was barred in 2024 by Venezuela’s courts from running for president and challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has ruled since 2013.
“Oh my God … I have no words,” Machado told Nobel Committee secretary Kristian Berg Harpviken in a phone call shared on social media.
“I thank you so much, but I hope you understand this is a movement, this is an achievement of a whole society. I am just one person. I certainly do not deserve it,” she added.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said, “When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist.”
The White House criticised the decision, just days after former U.S. President Donald Trump announced a breakthrough in talks to halt the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives… The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” said White House spokesperson Steven Cheung in a post on X.
It remains unclear whether Machado will be able to attend the ceremony in Oslo on December 10.
Should she not attend, she would join the list of Peace Prize laureates prevented from doing so in the award’s 124-year-history, including Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1975, Poland’s Lech Walesa in 1983 and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.
The United Nations human rights office welcomed the award as recognition of “the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections.”
Joergen Watne Frydnes, head of the Nobel Committee, said he hoped the award would energize Venezuela’s pro-democracy movement: “We hope that the entire opposition will have renewed energy to continue the work for a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Machado becomes the first Venezuelan and the sixth Latin American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. — (Reuters)