Venezuelan activist Maria Corina Machado has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, announced by the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. Internationally known for her strong opposition to the authoritarian regime of Nicolas Maduro, Machado received the award for having courageously and decisively defended democratic principles and human rights in a context of systematic repression and censorship.
The head of the Nobel committee called her one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in modern Latin American times.
“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a courageous and dedicated champion of peace, a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst growing darkness. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado. She is being recognized for her tireless work in promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her fight to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
The face of the democratic opposition in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado was born in Caracas in 1967, and is educated as an industrial engineer. Her political activity began in the 2000s with the founding of a civil society organization engaged in electoral monitoring. In 2011, she became part of the National Assembly as a deputy for the state of Miranda, standing out for her open dissent against the government of Hugo Chavez and then of Nicolás Maduro.
In 2013, she founded Vente Venezuela, a liberal and pro-democracy party. In 2023, she secured broad support in the opposition primaries but was subsequently banned from holding public office for 15 years. Since the July 28, 2024 elections, considered by international observers to be far from free, Machado has lived in hiding and has carried out her political activities clandestinely, fearing for her own safety and that of her associates.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated in public that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize this year, but on the eve of the announcement, experts said that the president would not win because he was dismantling the international world order that the Nobel committee highly values.
