OSLO, Norway (AFP) — The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, the Norwegian Nobel Committee (NCC) said.

Machado was honored “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 NCC in Oslo.

Machado has been a “key, unifying figure in a political oppostion that was once deeply divided ... in a brutal authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis,” Frydnes said.  

The committee hailed her as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times,” noting that she has been forced to live in hiding in the past year.

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

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

The award will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on 10 December, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prizes’ creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

The Peace Prize is the only Nobel awarded in Oslo, with the other disciplines announced in Stockholm.

On Thursday, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Laszlo Krasznahorkai, considered by many as Hungary’s most important living author, whose works explore themes of postmodern dystopia and melancholy.