President of Haiti killed in his house by gunmen
Presided during conflict and natural disasters
Jovenel Moïse, who has been assassinated aged 53, was a businessman and politician who had been president of Haiti since 2017; he was shot dead by a gang of gunmen who broke into his residence in the hills above the country’s capital, Port-au-prince.
Moïse was an enthusiastic entrepreneur before he threw himself into the political fray of his impoverished Caribbean homeland; but his time in office was blighted by the after-effects of the 2010 earthquake — which killed 200,000 — as well as Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and there were frequent outbreaks of anti-government violence. In 2020, admitting that Haiti was in “constant crisis,” and facing allegations of corruption, he announced that he would henceforth rule by decree.
He had first been elected president in October 2015, but the results were disputed and an interim president installed. In 2016, he won a clear victory in fresh elections and in 2017 he was sworn in.
Jovenel Moïse was born at Trou-du-nord in the northeast of the country on June 26, 1968. When he was six his family moved to Port-auprince, where he attended the Lycee Toussaint Louverture and the Centre Culturel du College Canado-haitien.
In 1996, he married a former classmate, Martine Joseph, and left the capital with a vision of developing businesses in rural areas. His first venture was a firm selling spare parts for cars in Port-de-paix on Haiti’s northern coast. That year he also began growing bananas on a 25-acre organic plantation.
In 2001, he teamed up with the American firm Culligan to build a drinking-water plant to serve the north of the country. He gained the nickname “banana man” thanks to another plantation, extending over 25,000 acres.
But with his focus on improving the lives of the rural poor, who make up a large percentage of Haiti’s population, he was noticed by the politicians, and in 2015 President Michel Martelly nominated Moïse as his successor, as candidate for his Haitian Tet Kale Party.
After Moïse’s death the country’s prime minister, Claude Joseph, declared that the assassination had been carried out by an “armed commando group”, some of whom appeared to be foreign. Martine Joseph, was injured in the attack that killed her husband. She survives him with their three children.