The Nobel Institute clarified on Friday that the Nobel Peace Prize honor remains "inseparably linked" to the person or organization that won it.

On Thursday, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the prize last year, gave her medal to US President Donald Trump following the kidnapping and removal of Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, by US special forces.

A White House official said Trump intends to keep the medal, but the Nobel Institute said in a statement: "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."

The Norwegian committee, which did not refer to Trump ​and Machado by name, said it does not comment on a Nobel laureate's statements, decisions or actions after the prize is announced, nor does it stipulate what a prize winner may or may not do with the actual medal.

"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. This means that a laureate is free to keep, give away, sell, or donate these items," it said, adding however:

"The prize ‍itself – the honor and recognition – remains inseparably linked to the person or organization designated as the laureate by the Norwegian Nobel Committee."

On Friday, Trump said he will remain in contact with Machado, saying: "I think she's a very fine woman, and we'll be talking again."

So far, the Trump administration seems satisfiedwith Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez as Maduro's initial successor.

Have any other Nobel laureates given away their medals?

It's not the first time a Nobel prize winner ⁠has given away their medal.

​In 1943, Norwegian Nobel literature laureate Knut Hamsun gave his to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as a sign of his open admiration for Adolf Hitler.

In 2022, Russian Nobel Peace ‌laureate Dmitry Muratov sold ‌his medal for $100 million to raise money for refugee children in Ukraine.

And in 2024, the widow of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan donated his 2001 Nobel Peace Prize medal to the UN office in Geneva.

Edited by: Roshni Majumdar