OSLO: The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, a “unifying” figure in what has become a “brutal” state, the Nobel jury said.

The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million.

Woken in the middle of the night by a call from the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who informed her of the prize, the 58-year-old said she was confident the opposition would succeed in securing a peaceful transition to democracy in her country.

“We’re not there yet. We’re working very hard to achieve it, but I’m sure that we will prevail,” she told Kristian Berg Harpviken in a video of the call posted to X.

Committee chairman says she’s honoured for her struggle to achieve peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy

“This is certainly the biggest recognition to our people that certainly deserve it,” she said, adding: “I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve this.” Machado, who has lived in hiding for the past year, was honoured “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,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

The committee hailed her as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times”.

“Despite serious threats against her life, she has rem­ained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions.”

Rumours have circulated on social networks that she is sheltering at the US embassy.

Venezuelan opposition figurehead Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia hailed her win as “a well-deserved recognition of the long struggle of a woman and an entire people for freedom and democracy”.

Popularity

Machado was the opposition’s presidential candidate for Venezuela’s 2024 elections, but Nicolas Maduro’s government blocked her candidacy. She then backed the reluctant, little-known ex-diplomat Gon­zalez Urrutia as her stand-in, accompanying him on rallies.

Always dressed in white, she was welcomed like a rock star, her supporters rushing to get a glimpse or touch her, holding up babies and children and proffering handwritten notes of support and presents of baseball caps or flowers.

An engineer by training, Caracas-born Machado ent­ered politics in 2002 at the head of the association Sumate (Join us), pushing for a referendum to recall Maduro’s mentor, the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez. She was accused of treason over the referendum call and received death threats, prompting her to send her two young sons and daughter to live abroad.

In 2024, Machado was awarded the European Union’s human rights Sakharov Prize, and the Council of Europe’s Vaclav Havel Prize.

Her latest accolade comes as the United States has increasingly carried out strikes off Venezuelan shores in international waters, claiming to act against drug smugglers. Washington accuses Maduro of leading a drug cartel, and does not recognise him as the country’s legitimate leader. Mac­hado and Gonzalez Urrutia have backed US military pressure on the Maduro regime as a “necessary measure” towards the “restoration of popular sovereignty in Venezuela”.

Unifying figure

Venezuela has evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country to a “brutal authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis,” the Nobel committee’s Frydnes said.

The opposition has been systematically suppressed by means of “election rigging, legal prosecution and imprisonment.” Machado has been a “key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided,” he said.

She was not among those mentioned as possible laureates in the run-up to Friday’s announcement.

“We base our decision only on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel,” he stressed.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2025