Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Machado leads the opposition "Vente Venezuela," which has organized large anti-government protests while criticizing the Maduro administration's rigged elections and corruption.
On the 10th (local time), the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Machado this year's Nobel Peace Prize, saying she "fought to advance the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and to peacefully transition the dictatorship to democracy."
Since 1901, the Nobel Committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to individuals or organizations that have contributed to human peace. Machado is the 106th laureate.
Machado was born in 1967 as the eldest of four daughters into a wealthy family that ran the Venezuelan steel company "SIVENSA." She majored in industrial engineering in college. After engaging in civic activism, including founding the vote-monitoring group "Súmate" in 2002, she entered politics by winning a seat in the National Assembly in 2010. At the time, she set the record for the most votes in the history of Venezuela's National Assembly.
However, in 2014 the then–National Assembly speaker expelled Machado from the legislature, saying she had violated the constitution. Since then, as she led large anti-government demonstrations, she became a prime target for the administration's concentrated pressure. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Machado was named the unified opposition candidate, but the Supreme Court of Venezuela disqualified her from holding public office for 15 years, nullifying her candidacy. After Maduro secured a third term in what critics called a rigged election, she was arrested during a rally and later released. She is currently said to be in hiding in Venezuela.
Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly said in public that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, but it did not happen.