Machado gifts medal to Trump, stuns Norway

Norway reacted with disbelief to the news that Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado gave her medal to US President Donald Trump, who has long coveted the award.

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A Nobel Prize medal on display at a hospital in Brooklyn. The Nobel Prize has become the focus of an ethical debate about who gets to claim it after Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's opposition leader, offered to share hers with President Donald Trump.

(AFP)

"That's completely unheard of," Janne Haal-and Matlary, a professor with the University of Oslo and a former politician, told public broadcaster NRK. “It’s a total lack of respect for the award, on her part,” she said, calling the act “meaningless” and “pathetic.”

Mr Trump, who claims to deserve the peace prize for having resolved numerous wars during his second term, accepted the medal from the Venezuelan opposition leader at a White House meeting on Thursday. He had earlier expressed his dissatisfaction with the decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

“The Nobel Prize and the laureate are inseparable,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement on Friday. “Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else's possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

There are no restrictions in the statutes of the Nobel Foundation on what a laureate may do with the medal, the diploma, or the prize money, the committee said. This means that a laureate is free to keep, give away, sell, or donate these items. A number of laureates have sold or given away their medals over the years, according to the committee.

The controversy is yet another stain on the reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize and underscores how politicized the award has become. The decision to award Machado was seen by some as an attempt to avoid angering Trump after his unprecedentedly aggressive push to secure the prize.