The Council of Europe on September 30, 2024 awarded its 2024 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize to leading Venezuelan political figure and rights defender María Corina Machado.
- She was awarded for her struggle for democracy under President Nicolas Maduro’s iron-fisted rule.
- She is the first Latin American to win the award, named after the late Czech dissident, playwright and post-communist president Vaclav Havel.
- Ms. Machado, 56, played a key role in Venezuela’s presidential election in July. Although the authorities proclaimed Mr. Maduro the winner, the opposition believes its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won.
Václav Havel Human Rights Prize
- The 60,000-euro prize was presented at a special ceremony on the opening day of the autumn plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg.
- The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize is awarded each year by PACE, in partnership with the Václav Havel Library and the Charta 77 Foundation.
- Previous winners include the 2023 laureate, the Turkish philanthropist and civil society activist Osman Kavala, who remains in prison after his arrest in November 2017, and 2022 winner the Russian activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
