No Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump; Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado gets the peace award

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado.

Machado 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.

Venezuela has evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country to an authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis. Nearly 8 million people have left the country. The opposition has been systematically suppressed by means of election rigging, legal prosecution and imprisonment.

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. As a founder of Súmate, an organisation devoted to democratic development, Machado stood up for free and fair elections more than 20 years ago, as stated by the Nobel Prize Committee.

As she said, “It was a choice of ballots over bullets.”

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