OSLO - Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct 10 for promoting democratic rights in her country and her struggle to achieve a transition to democracy, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

Ms Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding, was blocked in 2024 by Venezuela’s courts from running for president and thus challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.

“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” it said in its citation.

‘I don’t deserve this’

Mr Maduro, whose 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term in January 2025, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture.

After being blocked from running in 2024, Ms Machado threw herself into campaigning for her replacement, former ambassador Edmundo Gonzalez, drawing crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands, according to attendees and images captured by media.

But several members of Ms Machado’s inner circle have faced arrest, including her head of security at the time of the campaign, and six members of her team took refuge in Argentina’s embassy after prosecutors issued warrants for their arrest.

“Oh my God… I have no words,” Ms Machado told the secretary of the award body, Mr Kristian Berg Harpviken, in a phone call which the committee posted on social media.

“I don’t deserve this,” she added.

Unclear whether she will be able to attend ceremony

It was not immediately clear whether she would be able to attend the award ceremony in Oslo on Dec 10.

Should she not attend, she would join the list of Peace Prize laureates prevented from doing so in the award’s 124-year-history, including Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1975, Poland’s Lech Walesa in 1983 and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.

Ms Machado is the first Venezuelan national to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the sixth from Latin America.

The United Nations human rights office welcomed the award to Ms Machado as a recognition of “the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections”.

The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Mr Joergen Watne Frydnes, said he hoped the award would spur the Venezuelan opposition’s work.

“We hope that the entire opposition will have renewed energy to continue the work for a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” Mr Frydnes told Reuters after the announcement.

It could also strengthen international pressure against the Maduro administration, said Human Rights Watch’s Americas director Juanita Goebertus Estrada.

US has been strong supporter of Venezuelan opposition

The lead-up to the 2025 award had been dominated by US President Donald Trump’s

that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

“I think the main takeaway is that the committee is again demonstrating its independence, that they wouldn’t be swayed by popular opinions or political leaders to award the prize,” said Mr Halvard Leira, research director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

“The democratic opposition of Venezuela is something that the US has been eager to support. So, in that sense, it would be hard for anyone to constitute this as an insult to Trump.”

The United States has struck several vessels allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks.

Mr Trump has also said the US would look into attacking drug cartels “coming by land” in Venezuela.

Mr Trump has determined that the US is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, according to a document notifying Congress of its legal justification for deadly US strikes on boats off Venezuela.

Gaza deal too late for Trump this year

Mr Frydnes, the Nobel committee leader, declined to say what it would take for Mr Trump or others to win the prize in the future, or if efforts to end the fighting in Gaza could lead to an award in 2026.

“If it is nominated, then it will be considered, but time will show,” Mr Frydnes said.

“It’s not our task to tell other people or other countries what to do, our task is to give out the peace prize.... So we’ll have to see next year.”

The committee took its final decision before a ceasefire and hostage deal under the

was announced on Oct 8.

Ahead of the announcement, experts on the award had said Mr Trump would not win it as he is dismantling the international world order the Nobel committee cherishes.

The peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine. Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, won in 2024.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns (S$1.5 million) is due to be presented in Oslo on Dec 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will. REUTERS