Venezuela’s Maria Machado bestowed Nobel Peace Prize 2025
Maria Corina Machado was on Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 in recognition of her tireless work promoting Venezuelans’ democratic rights and for her struggle to achieve a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Machado was described as one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in modern times for consistently “keeping the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
The activist, who clocked 58 this week, has been a unifying figure in a political opposition that was formerly deeply divided but found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee lamented how Venezuela evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country to a brutal, authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis.
“Most Venezuelans live in deep poverty, even as the few at the top enrich themselves,” the organization noted. “The violent machinery of the state is directed against the country’s own citizens.”
More than 7 million people have fled the country in recent years, while the opposition and political figures have been systematically suppressed through legal prosecution, imprisonment, and election rigging.
For over two decades, Machado, one of BBC’s 100 Women in 2018 and listed among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2025, has spoken out for judicial independence, human rights and popular representation.
In 2023, the Nobel Peace Prize winner triumphed at the opposition primary to emerge as the unity candidate for the 2024 presidential poll but the regime blocked her from participating in the election.
Despite serious threats against her life, Machado has remained in the country, intermittently living in hiding, while resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society and insisting on peaceful transition to democracy.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee noted that when authoritarians seize power, “it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom, who refuse to stay silent but step forward in spite of grave risk.”
62-year-old Nicolás Maduro has been serving as the 53rd President of Venezuela since 2013. He was as the 24th Vice President under President Hugo Chávez (2012 to 2013) and was the Foreign Affairs Minister from 2006 to 2012.