Venezuelan opposition leader Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize…

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 US President Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that she deserved it.

Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer, was barred by Venezuelan courts from running for president in 2024 and therefore from challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.

“Oh my God… I have no words,” Machado told the secretary of the awarding body, Kristian Berg Harpviken, in a phone call, which the Nobel Committee posted on social media.

“Thank you so much, but I hope you understand that this is a movement. This is an achievement of an entire society. I’m just one person. I certainly don’t deserve this,” he added.

THE WHITE HOUSE CRITICIZES THE DECISION AS “POLITICS”

The White House criticized the decision, just days after Trump announced a breakthrough in talks to stop fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

“President Trump will continue to make peace deals, end wars, and save lives… The Nobel Committee has demonstrated that it puts politics before peace,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said in a post on X.

Maduro, whose 12 years in office were marked by a deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term in January this year despite a six-month election dispute, international calls for him to step aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture.

“When authoritarians take power, it is crucial to recognize the courageous defenders of freedom who rise up and resist,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation.

WILL YOU BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CEREMONY?

It is not yet clear whether he will be able to attend the awards ceremony which will be held in Oslo on 10 December.

If he does not participate, he would join the list of Peace Prize winners who have been barred from doing so in the prize’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.

Machado is the first Venezuelan to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the sixth from Latin America.

The United Nations Human Rights Office welcomed the award given to Machado as a recognition of the “clear aspirations of the Venezuelan people for free and fair elections.”

The head of the prize commission, Joergen Watne Frydnes, said he hoped the prize would stimulate the work of the Venezuelan opposition.

“We hope that the entire opposition has renewed energy to continue the work for a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” Frydnes told Reuters after the announcement.

This could also strengthen international pressure against the Maduro administration, said Human Rights Watch Americas director Juanita Goebertus Estrada.

THE UNITED STATES HAS BEEN A STRONG SUPPORT OF THE VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION

The run-up to this year’s award was dominated by Trump’s repeated public declarations that he deserved to win the prize.

Trump is also a fierce critic of Maduro.

“I think the main conclusion is that the committee is once again demonstrating its independence, that it does not allow itself to be influenced by popular opinions or political leaders in awarding the prize,” Halvard Leira, research director at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, told Reuters.

“Venezuela’s democratic opposition is something that the United States has been eager to support. So in that sense, it would be difficult for anyone to see it as an insult to Trump.”

In recent weeks the United States has struck several ships allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela.

Trump also said the United States would consider attacking drug cartels “that arrive by land” in Venezuela.

Trump has determined that the United States is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, according to a document notifying Congress of his legal justification for deadly US attacks on ships off Venezuela.

THE GAZA DEAL IS TOO LATE FOR TRUMP THIS YEAR

Frydnes, the leader of the Nobel committee, declined to say what it would take for Trump or others to win the prize in the future, or whether efforts to end the fighting in Gaza could lead to a prize in 2026.

“If he is nominated, it will be considered, but time will show,” Frydnes said.

“It’s not our job to tell other people or other countries what to do, our job is to award the peace prize… So we’ll see next year.”

The committee made its final decision before a ceasefire and hostage deal was announced Wednesday as part of the first phase of Trump’s initiative to end the war in Gaza.

Before the Nobel announcement, experts on the prize had also said that Trump was very unlikely to win as his policies were seen as dismantling the international world order so dear to the Nobel committee.

The peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a popular movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, won in 2024.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish kronor, or about $1.2 million, will be awarded in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the prize, in his 1895 will.

[Reuters]

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