It is one measure of the battle she continues to fight that Maria Corina Machado was unable to receive her Nobel Peace Prize in person on Wednesday.

The Venezuelan opposition leader was awarded the prize in October for her efforts to move her country towards democracy and away from the disputed rule of President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela's attorney general has announced that she would be regarded as a fugitive if she traveled to Oslo, Norway, to pick up the award, which was instead accepted by her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado.

Machado is not the first recipient of the prize to miss the ceremony. Here are some of the other most notable absentees.

2023: Narges Mohammadi 

The Iranian human rights activist  won the prize in 2023  "for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all", in the words of the organizers.

She has been a vocal critic of many repressive aspects of her country's governance, most notably the mandatory wearing of the hijab and the death penalty.

Mohammadi has been locked up in Tehran's Evin prison since 2021, bar a brief medical release last year in which she posted a social media clip of herself shouting "Woman, Life, Freedom," the slogan of the female protest movement that won her the Nobel recognition. Her twin sons collected the prize on her behalf.

2022: Ales Bialiatski

It was a similar story a year earlier, when Belarusian human rights activist Bialiatski was jailed on tax evasion charges and unable to accept his award. Fellow human rights activists and experts dispute the legitimacy of the charges in a country ruled by the authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko.

Bialiatski was one of the founding members of the Viasna Human Rights Center and has long campaigned for independence and democracy in Belarus. He had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times before his 2022 victory. He was arrested and charged in 2021 before being sentenced to seven years in 2022. His wife accepted the award for him.

2010: Liu Xiaobo   

The Chinese dissident, who died in 2017, was another who missed out on the ceremony due to incarceration. He was awarded the prize for "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" and dedicated it, via his wife, Liu Xia, to those that were killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Liu Xia wanted to collect the award on his behalf but was denied the chance to do so and was placed under surveilled house arrest. At the ceremony, the absence of Liu Xiaobo was marked by a symbolic empty chair.

1991: Aung San Suu Kyi 

A champion of democracy in Myanmar who was a driving force in her country's move from military junta towards democracy in the 2010s, Aung San Suu Kyi later served as the head of the country's government, from 2016-21, before military rule was re-imposed.

Earlier, she had spent decades in jail and under house arrest as part of a crackdown by the military leadership that her democratic opposition sought to expel. She was given permission to travel to the ceremony but feared for her safety, instead allowing her two sons and her husband to collect the award on her behalf. This also marked the first use of the symbolic empty chair.

1983: Lech Walesa 

Another Nobel Peace Prize winner who went on to lead his country, Walesa was instrumental in forcing recognition of workers rights and trade unions in communist Poland, before becoming its first democratically-elected president for nearly 70 years in 1990.

Walesa, who was arrested numerous times, felt the chance he would not be allowed to re-enter Poland was too great to travel to the ceremony, with his wife and son accepting the award instead.

1975: Andrei Sakharov

A Soviet physicist of global renown judged a dissident for his position on civil liberties and other issues, Sakharov died in 1989. But his name lives on in the Sakharov Prize given by the European Parliament each year for people and institutions that promote human rights.

Sakharov was involved in the former USSR's nuclear weapons program before realizing the implications of his work. The Nobel committee called him "a spokesman for the conscience of mankind" but Sakharov was not allowed to travel by the Soviet Union and was represented by his wife.

1973: Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho 

One of the most controversial awards of the prize, the pair were honored for a Vietnam War ceasefire agreement that fell apart soon after.

Le Duc Tho spurned the prize because he felt the conditions of the ceasefire were not adhered to and Kissinger opted not to travel due to fear of protests against him and the US government.

1935: Carl von Ossietzky 

A German journalist whose work shone a light on many horrors in his country, most notably the rise of the Nazi party, von Ossietzky was eventually arrested. He was sent to a concentration camp, where he was brutally tortured, in 1933.

After his release, von Ossietzky suffered from severe Tuberculosis, which eventually killed him in 1938. While the German government under Adolf Hitler could not stop him receiving the prize in 1935, they did stop him traveling to collect it.

Edited by: Carla Bleiker