The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Venezuelan political opposition leader 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 democracy.”
Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announcing the award, called Machado “a brave and committed champion of peace.”
He lauded Machado as 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.”
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Venezuela has been ruled by an autocratic regime for decades, currently led by President Nicolas Maduro, whose election in 2024 was widely dismissed as non-democratic and whose leadership is not recognized by the U.S. or many other nations. Maduro has been locked in an increasingly tense standoff with President Trump’s government, which has accuses Maduro of working with drug smuggling gangs that traffic narcotics into the U.S.
The Trump administration has instead recognized an opposition politician backed by Machado as the legitimate winner of the 2024 election.
Rumors have circulated on social media for weeks that Machado, who has remained in hiding since the 2024 election, could be sheltering at the U.S. embassy in her country’s capital. Machado has backed the U.S. military pressure on Maduro’s regime as a “necessary measure” toward the “restoration of popular sovereignty in Venezuela.”
Following the brief detention of Machado early this year, when she was arrested after leading anti-government protests in Caracas, Mr. Trump issued a warning to Maduro about the safety of opposition leaders.
Mr. Trump said Machado was “peacefully expressing the voices and the WILL of the Venezuelan people with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating against the regime. The great Venezuelan American community in the United States overwhelmingly support a free Venezuela and strongly supported me. These freedom fighters should not be harmed and MUST stay SAFE and ALIVE!“
What is the Nobel Peace Prize and how is it awarded?
The Nobel Prize was established by a Swedish businessman and prolific inventor named Alfred Nobel, who died 1896. In his will, Nobel said that his fortune was to be used to establish a fund to distribute prizes, “to those who … shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind,” according to the Nobel Peace Prize’s website.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which determines the recipient, says the award should be given to the person who has done the most to advance peace in the world. Today that committee consists of five members, selected by the Norwegian Parliament. They consider the nominees in secret, and candidates’ names are kept under seal for 50 years. The nomination deadline is eight months before the announcement.
The award money for 2025 is 11 million Swedish kronor, the equivalent of more than $1 million U.S. dollars.
Four U.S. presidents and former presidents, as well as a former vice president, have won the Nobel Peace Prize, with former President Barack Obama winning in his first year in office for his “efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation.”
The other two sitting presidents who have been awarded the honor are Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1920. Former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and former Vice President Al Gore was given the honor in 2007.
President Trump’s Nobel Prize ambitions
President Trump had said he “deserves” the prize, and he had expressed multiple times his desire to receive the Nobel, citing his involvement in halting foreign conflicts.
Political allies of the president, and some foreign leaders including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had announced their intentions to nominate the president for the prize, although the committee doesn’t divulge nominees.
The president claims he’s ended seven wars — between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Thailand and Cambodia, Serbia and Kosovo, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Armenia and Azerbaijan. Foreign policy experts say some of those conflicts were not full-scale wars, and several remain unresolved.
During a speech to U.S. military leaders on Sept. 30, the president said it would be a “big insult” to the country if he didn’t get the prize.
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly last month, the president said, “Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” citing his role in the Middle East Abraham Accords and his efforts to stop international conflicts.
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