Venezuela's opposition leader Machado will not attend Nobel Peace Prize ceremony

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado will not be present to accept her Nobel Peace Prize award in Oslo on Wednesday, the Nobel Institute told AFP.

"She is not coming to the ceremony," Nobel Institute spokesperson Erik Aasheim said ahead of the event due to start at 1:00pm (1200 GMT). Machado, 58, lives in hiding and it was not known ahead of the ceremony whether she had managed to leave Venezuela.

When she won the prize in October, Machado dedicated it in part to US President Donald Trump, who has said he himself deserved the honour.

President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, says Trump is trying to overthrow him to gain access to Venezuela's vast oil reserves and that Venezuelan citizens and armed forces will resist any such attempt.

Machado, 58, was due to receive the award at a ceremony at Oslo City Hall in the presence of King Harald, Queen Sonja and Latin American leaders including Argentine President Javier Milei and Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa.

"She is unfortunately not in Norway and will not stand on stage at Oslo City Hall at 1 p.m. when the ceremony starts," Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the institute and the permanent secretary of the award body, told broadcaster NRK.

Asked where she was, Harpviken said: "I don't know."

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Even though she will not reach Oslo, the ceremony will still go ahead. When a laureate is unable to attend, a close family member usually steps in to receive the prize and deliver the Nobel lecture in place of the laureate. 

In this case, it will be Machado's daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, Harpviken said.

On Tuesday, Machado did not appear at a scheduled press conference, with the Norwegian Nobel Institute saying in a statement it was unable to say "when and how she will arrive for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony".

"I know that she wants to come and that she is en route but that's all I know," said Kristian Berg Harpviken, the institute's director and permanent secretary to the award committee.

"We will make sure that it's a worthy ceremony that recognises this year's laureate, casting a spotlight on the situation in Venezuela and the importance democracy has for peace," he told public broadcaster NRK.

US military strikes

Machado has aligned herself with hawks close to Trump who argue that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security, despite doubts raised by the US intelligence community.

The Trump administration has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America's Pacific coast.

Human rights groups, some Democrats and several Latin American countries have condemned the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings of civilians.

Venezuela's armed forces are planning to mount a guerrilla-style resistance or sow chaos in the event of a US air or ground attack, according to sources with knowledge of the efforts and planning documents seen by Reuters.

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Prize 'international validation' of election result

In 2024, Machado was barred from running in the presidential election despite having won the opposition's primary by a landslide. She went into hiding in August 2024 after authorities expanded arrests of opposition figures following the disputed vote.

The electoral authority and top court declared Maduro the winner, but international observers and the opposition say its candidate handily won and the opposition has published ballot box-level tallies as evidence of its victory.

Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, said the Nobel prize had given "a strong signal of international validation ... (of) the democratic results that had been forgotten".

He told Reuters it had also elevated Machado to "a person that ... the international community and the world can hang their hopes on", he said.

"... Often times democratic movements need a face. They need a story."

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters, AFP)