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20 October 2025
Nobel Peace Prize Committee
Norwegian Nobel Institute
Henrik Ibsens gate 51, 0255
Oslo, Norway
Re: Nobel Peace Prize 2025
Dear Committee Members,
Jane Addams co-founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915 and was its first president while the world waged world war.
Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
Emily Greene Balch served as WILPF’s secretary1919-1922 and 1934-1935. She became Pres-ident of WILPF from 1935 to 1939 as fascism and imperialism led inexorably to the second world war.
Emily Greene Balch received the award in 1946.
We, today’s members of the U.S. Section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, are their daughters and sons. We know and walk the paths to peace and have walked them for 110 years. We know all too well the markers of authoritarianism, aggression, and war.
We know what Peace is. . .and what Peace is not.
It is clear to us that the selection of María Corina Machado as the 2025 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize is a travesty, and we repudiate it.
Peace is not. . .
- Participation in the 2002 coup attempt to overthrow elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez
- Calls for foreign military intervention in Venezuela in a 2018 letter to leaders of Israel and Argentina
- Current support for US attacks on small boats in international waters off the coast of Venezuela and extrajudicial murder of their occupants
- Calls for US intervention in Venezuela as the US shows every sign of an imminent attack by sending warships, including nuclear vessels, in a military deployment in Caribbean waters disguised as an anti-drug operation
- Support for this threat to the peace and stability of the region, a deployment that stands as a flagrant violation of International Law, the Charter of the United Nations, and the principles of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, adopted in January 2014 by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)
- Support for Israeli genocidal policies and practice as a signer, representing her Vente Venezuela Party, of a document of cooperation with Israel’s Likud Party
- Support for unilateral coercive economic sanctions against the people of Venezuela, measures proven to have substantial and even lethal effects on a nation’s public health, with a death toll similar to that of armed conflict, disproportionately affecting children
- Calls for the privatization of Venezuela’s publicly held oil and ore and its appropriation by a privileged few
These encapsulate the positions and policies of María Corina Machado and her movement for an illusory democracy, a movement that demolishes a path to peace.
Peace is . . .
- inclusive dialog in search of consensus
- a framework for free and inclusive exchange of ideas
- nonviolent conflict resolution
- rejection of false illusions of democracy; promotion of inclusive democracy
- affirming the lived experience of those directly affected by policies and programs
- freedom to advocate and demonstrate for peace without fear of reprisal
- just distribution of the necessary means of survival and healthy development
- repudiation of deadly means of struggle such as starvation, sanctions, and appropriation of the commons by the few
- use of a people’s natural resources to ensure the universal right to freedom from want
- social and economic conditions that make war and want unnecessary
We believe and live the tenet of Emily Greene Balch that “peace cannot rest upon hunger or fear.”
We believe and live the tenet of Jane Addams that “To attain peace, we must teach peace; and to teach peace, we must live it.”
We, the daughters and sons of Nobel Peace Laureates Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch, repudiate the selection of María Corina Machado as an exemplar of peace. We affirm, teach, and seek to live the peace of Addams, Balch, and our sister and brother WILPF members around the world.
Members of the Board of Directors of the United States Section of the
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
