The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, a “unifying” figure in what has become a “brutal” state, the Nobel jury said.

Machado, who has lived in hiding for the past year, was honoured “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.

“I am in shock,” the 58-year-old opposition leader could be heard saying in a video sent to AFP by her press team.

The committee hailed her as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times”.

“Despite serious threats against her life, she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions.”

Rumours have circulated on social networks that she is sheltering at the US embassy.

Venezuelan opposition figurehead Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia hailed her win as “a well-deserved recognition of the long struggle of a woman and an entire people for freedom and democracy”.

– Rock star popularity –

Machado was the opposition’s presidential candidate for Venezuela’s 2024 elections, but Nicolas Maduro’s government blocked her candidacy.

She then backed the reluctant, little-known ex-diplomat Gonzalez Urrutia as her stand-in, accompanying him on rallies.

Always dressed in white, she was welcomed like a rock star, her supporters rushing to get a glimpse or touch her, holding up babies and children and proffering handwritten notes of support and presents of baseball caps or flowers.

An engineer by training, Caracas-born Machado entered politics in 2002 at the head of the association Sumate (Join us), pushing for a referendum to recall Maduro’s mentor, the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

She was accused of treason over the referendum call and received death threats, prompting her to send her two young sons and daughter to live abroad.

Machado was not among those mentioned as possible laureates in the run-up to Friday’s announcement.

In 2024, Machado was awarded the European Union’s human rights Sakharov Prize, and the Council of Europe’s Vaclav Havel Prize.

Her latest accolade comes as the United States has increasingly carried out strikes off Venezuelan shore in international waters, claiming to act against drug smugglers.

Washington accuses Maduro of leading a drug cartel, and does not recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader.

Machado and Gonzalez Urrutia have backed US military pressure on the Maduro regime as a “necessary measure” towards the “restoration of popular sovereignty in Venezuela.”

– Trump’s hopes for prize –

Venezuela has evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country to a “brutal authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis,” the Nobel committee’s Frydnes said.

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,” he said.

US President Donald Trump had meanwhile made no secret of his desire to win this year’s Peace Prize.

Since returning to the White House for his second term in January, the US leader has repeatedly insisted that he “deserves” the Nobel for his role in resolving numerous conflicts — a claim observers say is broadly exaggerated.

The committee had made its choice days before late Thursday’s announcement of a deal to end the fighting in Gaza.

Regardless, Nobel experts had insisted Trump had no chance, noting that his “America First” policies run counter to the ideals of the Peace Prize as laid out in Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will creating the award.

Frydnes insisted the Nobel Committee is not swayed by lobbying campaigns for the prize.

“I think this committee has seen every type of campaign, media attention,” he said. “We base our decision only on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel,” he stressed.

The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million.

It will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. (Vanguard)