The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Venezuelan political opposition chief Maria Corina Machado “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.”
Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes, in asserting the award, referred to as Machado “a brave and committed champion of peace.”
He lauded Machado as 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.”
Opposition chief Maria Corina Machado gestures throughout an anti-government protest on Jan. 9, 2025, in Caracas, Venezuela.
Jesus Vargas/Getty
“In the past year, Miss Machado has been forced to live in hiding. Despite serious threats against her life, she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions,” stated Frydnes. “When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist.”
Venezuela has been dominated by an autocratic regime for many years and is presently led by President Nicolas Maduro, whose election in 2024 was extensively dismissed as non-democratic and whose management will not be acknowledged by the U.S. and lots of different nations. Maduro has been locked in an more and more tense standoff with the Trump administration, which has accused Maduro of working with drug smuggling gangs that visitors narcotics into the U.S.
The administration has as an alternative acknowledged an opposition politician backed by Machado, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, because the official winner of the 2024 election.
Rumors have circulated on social media for weeks that Machado, who has remained in hiding for the reason that 2024 election, might be sheltering on the U.S. embassy in her nation’s capital. Machado has backed the U.S. navy stress on Maduro’s regime as a “necessary measure” towards the “restoration of popular sovereignty in Venezuela.”
Venezuelan opposition chief María Corina Machado speaks about ban on presidential candidacy
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Mr. Trump stated Machado was “peacefully expressing the voices and the WILL of the Venezuelan individuals with lots of of hundreds of individuals demonstrating in opposition to the regime. The good Venezuelan American neighborhood in the USA overwhelmingly help a free Venezuela and strongly supported me. These freedom fighters shouldn’t be harmed and MUST keep SAFE and ALIVE!“
What’s the Nobel Peace Prize and the way is it awarded?
The Nobel Prize was established by a Swedish businessman and prolific inventor named Alfred Nobel, who died 1896. In his will, Nobel stated his fortune was for use to determine a fund to distribute prizes “to those who … shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind,” based on the Nobel Peace Prize’s web site.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which determines the recipient, says the award must be given to the one that has achieved probably the most to advance peace on the earth. At this time that committee consists of 5 members, chosen by the Norwegian Parliament. They take into account the nominees for the prize in secret, and candidates’ names are saved beneath seal for 50 years. The nomination deadline is eight months earlier than the announcement.
The award cash for 2025 is 11 million Swedish kronor, the equal of greater than 1 million U.S. {dollars}.
4 U.S. presidents and former presidents, in addition to a former vp, have received the Nobel Peace Prize, with former President Barack Obama profitable in his first 12 months in workplace for his “efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation.”
The opposite two sitting presidents who’ve been awarded the distinction are Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1920. Former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and former Vice President Al Gore was given the distinction in 2007.
President Trump’s Nobel Prize ambitions
President Trump had stated he “deserves” the prize, and he had expressed a number of instances his need to obtain it, citing his involvement in halting overseas conflicts.
Political allies of the president and a few overseas leaders together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had introduced their intentions to appoint Mr. Trump for the prize, although the committee doesn’t reveal the names of nominees.
The president claims he’s ended seven wars — between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Thailand and Cambodia, Serbia and Kosovo, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Armenia and Azerbaijan. Overseas coverage consultants say a few of these conflicts weren’t full-scale wars, and several other stay unresolved.
Throughout a speech to U.S. navy leaders on Sept. 30, Mr. Trump stated it could be a “big insult” to the nation if he didn’t get the prize.
Chatting with the United Nations Normal Meeting final month, he stated, “Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” citing his position within the Center East Abraham Accords and his efforts to cease worldwide conflicts.
