OSLO, Jan 17 — The Nobel Peace Prize is inseparable from the person who won it, the Nobel Committee said Friday, a day after this year’s winner gave her medal to US President Donald Trump.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said she had “presented” her Nobel medal to Trump, in a bid to win over the US president who had sidelined her since ousting Nicolas Maduro.
But the Nobel Committee’s statement from Oslo said: “Regardless of what may happen to the medal, the diploma, or the prize money, it is and remains the original laureate who is recorded in history as the recipient of the prize.”
“Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” it added.
The committee said it would make no comment “on Peace Prize laureates or the political processes that they are engaged in”.
There were no restrictions on what laureates did with the medal, diploma and money they received as part of the prize, it added.
It listed several instances in which laureates had sold or given away their medals.
Machado won hers for “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”, according to the award citation.
Trump had campaigned hard to win last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for what he says are his efforts to stop eight wars.
Instead it went to Machado, who appeared in Oslo last month to collect her prize – following a daring escape from Venezuela by boat – and then dedicated it to Trump.
Machado won hers for “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”, according to the award citation. — AFP
