OSLO (Reuters) -Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who lives in hiding, won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting dictatorship in the country, receiving the award despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated insistence he deserved it.
Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer, was blocked in 2024 by Venezuela’s courts from running for president and thus challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.
“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation.
‘SHE WAS OVERWHELMED’
After being blocked from running in 2024, Machado threw herself into campaigning for her replacement, former ambassador Edmundo Gonzalez, drawing crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands, according to attendees and images captured by media.
But several members of Machado’s inner circle have faced arrest, including her head of security at the time of the campaign, and six members of her team took refuge in Argentina’s embassy after prosecutors issued warrants for their arrest.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, the secretary of the award body, said he had spoken to Machado on the phone just before the announcement was made in Oslo.
“She said it was overwhelming and that this was a prize for a whole movement, the movement in Venezuela that has fought for democracy,” Harpviken said.
It was not immediately clear whether she would be able to attend the award ceremony in Oslo on December 10.
She is the first Venezuelan national to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the sixth from Latin America.
The United Nations human rights office welcomed the award to Machado as a recognition of “the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections”.
US HAS BEEN STRONG SUPPORTER OF VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION
The lead-up to this year’s award was dominated by Trump’s repeated public statements that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump is also a fierce critic of Maduro.
“I think the main takeaway is that the committee is again demonstrating its independence, that they wouldn’t be swayed by popular opinions or political leaders to award the prize,” said Halvard Leira, research director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
“Trump will interpret this as he wants to, but this is a prize given to a cause which the United States has very much supported over the years.
“The democratic opposition of Venezuela is something that the U.S. has been eager to support. So, in that sense, it would be hard for anyone to constitute this as an insult to Trump.”
The award to Machado comes at a time when the United States has struck several vessels allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks.
Trump has also said the U.S. would look into attacking drug cartels “coming by land” in Venezuela.
GAZA DEAL TOO LATE FOR TRUMP, THIS YEAR
The committee took its final decision before a ceasefire and hostage deal under the first phase of Trump’s initiative to end the war in Gaza was announced on Wednesday.
Ahead of the Nobel announcement, experts on the award had also said Trump was very unlikely to win as his policies were seen as dismantling the international world order the Nobel committee cherishes.
The peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, won in 2024.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.2 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, Nora Buli, Nerijus Adomaitis, Tom Little and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; Editing by Alex Richardson and Timothy Heritage)
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