Maria Corina Machado | Pakistan

Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The committee chose to focus on Venezuela at this time, in a year dominated by US President Donald Trump’s repeated public statements that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was on this year’s TIME Magazine “100 most influential People” list, where current US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said she was the “personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism”. “She is receiving the 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,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo. “As the leader of the democratic forces in the Venezuela, she is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times,” he said. He said that Machado had been a “key unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided; ...

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for promoting democratic rights in her country and her struggle to achieve a transition to democracy, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. The following are some facts about the democracy campaigner: Upper-class background Maria Corina Machado, 58, was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 7, 1967. She is an industrial engineer by training, and her father was a prominent businessman in Venezuela’s steel industry. Her upper-class roots have made her a target of criticism from Venezuela’s governing socialist party. In hiding Machado won a resounding victory in the opposition’s primary election in 2023, and her rallies attracted large crowds, but a ban from holding public office prevented her from running for president against Nicolas Maduro in an election in 2024, and she went into hiding. The country’s electoral authority and top court say Maduro, whose time in office has been marked by a deep economic and social crisis, won ...