The 58-year-old Machado is opposition leader in the Venezuelan parliament. She wanted to run against incumbent President Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 presidential election, but was barred from participating. Maduro governs the South American country authoritatively.
The Venezuelan politician is receiving the Nobel Prize for her “tireless work in standing up for democratic rights of Venezuelans,” the Nobel Prize Committee explained Friday morning in Oslo. She is also being praised for her efforts to transform Venezuela from “dictatorship to democracy.”
The prize will be presented to Machado on Dec. 10 in the Norwegian capital. It is not yet clear whether the Venezuelan will be present then because of “security reasons,” the committee said.
Prior to the ceremony, all eyes were on Trump, who made no secret of his ambition for the prestigious peace prize. The U.S. president publicly stated several times that he should win the Nobel Peace Prize and boasted that he had ended seven wars. Exactly which wars they were remained guesswork.
Some even saw the timing of the peace agreement between Israel and Hamas – Thursday – as a deliberate strategy by Trump to boost his chances. If that was the case, it remains to be seen whether the committee would have been so last minute. Committee members were already meeting on Monday to deliberate, BBC News reported.
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the most prestigious awards that politicians, organizations or other people working for sustainable peace can win. The prize is awarded annually by the Nobel Prize Committee, a five-member panel elected by parliament in Norway.
Well-known former winners include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (1990) and U.S. former President Barack Obama (2009). In 2012, the European Union was honored. Last year, the award went to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, which works for a world without nuclear weapons.
