Nobel Peace Prize 2025 Awarded To Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights in Venezuela and for leading a peaceful struggle in a bid to end authoritarian rule in the country.

“As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times. 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,” Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said while speaking to reporters on Friday in Oslo.

The Nobel Committee explicitly called her “a champion of peace who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness”.

Frydnes also repeated one of Machado’s famous quotes, while declaring the name of the recipient in Oslo: “Ms Machado stood up for free and fair elections more than 20 years ago. As she said: “It was a choice of ballots over bullets.” In political office and in her service to organisations since then, Ms Machado has spoken out for judicial independence, human rights and popular representation. She has spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people.”

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five original awards established by Alfred Nobel’s will in 1895. Unlike the other prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, the Peace Prize is presented by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a five-member body elected by the Norwegian Parliament.

Nobel specifically instructed that Norway, rather than Sweden, handle the peace prize.

Frydnes said Machado fulfilled most requirements for becoming a Nobel Peace laureate as stated by Alfred Nobel. “Maria Corina Machado meets all three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel’s will for the selection of a Peace Prize laureate. She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy,” Frydnes said.

“Maria Corina Machado has shown that the tools of democracy are also the tools of peace. She embodies the hope of a different future, one where the fundamental rights of citizens are protected, and their voices are heard. In this future, people will finally be free to live in peace,” he further added.

Last year, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations. The group, composed of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was recognized for its advocacy to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.