Venezuelan Activist Maria Corina Machado Wins 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

By Adedapo Adesanya

Venezuelan activist, Ms Maria Corina Machado was on Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prizes yearly, said she is a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.

“She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize 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,” a statement said.

It added that Ms Machado meets all three criteria stated in Mr Alfred Nobel’s will for the selection of a Peace Prize laureate. She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy

Ms Machado is the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, an oil producing country plagued by political crisis.

As a founder of Súmate, an organisation devoted to democratic development, Ms Machado stood up for free and fair elections more than 20 years ago, amid an authoritarian regime holding power in her country.

The Nobel committee said Ms Machado has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided – an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government.

“This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we disagree. At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more important than ever to defend this common ground,” it added.

Ahead of the Venezuelan election of 2024, Ms Machado was the opposition’s presidential candidate, but the regime blocked her candidacy. She then backed the representative of a different party, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, in the election.

The Nobel committee recognize her part in supporting volunteers, training of election observers, and ensuring that there was a transparent and fair election in the South American country.

However, the Venezuelan regime refused to accept the election result, and clung to power.

“In the past year, Ms Machado has been forced to live in hiding. Despite serious threats against her life she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions of people,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

The Peace Prize completes the first week of the Nobel awards, with medicine, physics, chemistry, and literature awarded in the last five days. The last of the prizes, economics, will be announced on Monday.