The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Venezuelan María Corina Machado. The Norwegian Committee tasked with conferring the prestigious award, chaired by Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chose her for her "tireless work in favour of the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy".

María Corina Machado: from her commitment to street children to political engagement in Venezuela

After studying engineering and finance, Machado briefly pursued a career as a businesswoman, then in 1992 founded the Fundación Atenea, which works on behalf of street children in the capital Caracas. In the early 2000s she was part of the group that founded the organisation Súmate, which calls for free elections.

In 2010 she was elected to the National Assembly for the first time, with a record number of preference votes, but was removed from office in 2014. As leader of the opposition party Vente Venezuela, in 2017 she founded a political alliance (Soy Venezuela), uniting the democratic forces of the South American country. In 2023 she ran in the presidential elections but was prevented from taking part, and therefore backed the leader of the opposition to Maduro, Edmundo González Urrutia.

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BREAKING NEWS
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2025 #NobelPeacePrize to 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

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"Machado – wrote the Norwegian Committee – receives the Nobel Peace Prize first and foremost for her commitment to democracy in Venezuela. But democracy is also in decline at the international level. Democracy, understood as the right to freely express one's opinion, to vote and to be represented in an elected government, is the foundation of peace both within and between countries."

The previous Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Japanese organisation of atomic bomb survivors

Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize went to the Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo, made up of survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in 1945, which killed approximately 120,000 people immediately and a similar number, from burns and radiation injuries, in the months and years that followed.

The one who is likely disappointed is United States President Donald Trump. The billionaire leading the North American nation has made no secret of his ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and perhaps for this very reason has been pressing in recent weeks for Israel and Hamas to accept the ceasefire agreement he himself brokered for the Gaza Strip. Following the announcement of the green light between the far-right government in Tel Aviv and the Palestinian militants, calls to that effect were not lacking.

No Nobel for Trump, despite appeals from Netanyahu and Milei, and support from Moscow

Argentine President Javier Milei, also far-right, stated plainly: "Any other president with such achievements would have received the Nobel Prize long ago." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged in a message posted on social network X that the award be given to Trump: "Give it to him, he deserves it." Tel Aviv's ambassador to the United States, Mike Huckabee, joined in declaring: "Many people love peace and march for it, but rare are those who actually create it." Thus attacking, en passant, those who took to the streets to protest against the massacre being carried out in Gaza. A Kremlin adviser also explicitly expressed Moscow's support in the same vein.

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Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence.

Maria Corina Machado – awarded the 2025 #NobelPeacePrize – has spent years working

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On the other hand, one cannot blame them entirely, when one considers that the prize was awarded even to Henry Kissinger, first National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State during the United States administration of Richard Nixon. He received the Nobel for his work towards ending the war in Vietnam. Yet Kissinger is the same person who played a central role in the violent overthrow of Chile's democratically elected president Salvador Allende, who was killed in the government palace in 1973 during a coup backed by Washington itself. In its wake, a brutal fascist dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet would be installed. At the time, two members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee resigned in protest.

The other candidates for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

Among the possible winners for 2025, alongside Machado, were the Emergency response rooms of Sudan, a network providing humanitarian support in the African country ravaged by civil war; the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; the Committee to Protect Journalists, a US organisation that promotes press freedom and reports on journalists killed in the line of duty.