Laurent Gbagbo

Biography

Laurent Gbagbo was born in 1945 in Gagnoa, in what was then French West Africa. A history teacher and opponent of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, he was jailed from 1971 to 1973, earned a doctorate at Paris Diderot University in 1979 and in 1980 became director of the Institute of History, Art and African Archaeology at the University of Abidjan.

After a 1982 teachers' strike he founded what became the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) and went into exile in France, returning in 1988 to become the party's secretary-general. He ran against Houphouët-Boigny in the first multi-party presidential election in 1990, won a seat in the National Assembly the same year and became FPI president in 1996. In October 2000 he stood against the military ruler Robert Guéï, who claimed victory; street protests forced Guéï out and Gbagbo took office as president.

His presidency was dominated by conflict. A rebellion in September 2002 split the country between the government-held south and the rebel north, and a peace deal with the New Forces was only signed in Ouagadougou in 2007. Elections were repeatedly postponed until 2010, when the electoral commission declared Alassane Ouattara the winner; the Constitutional Council named Gbagbo instead, and the standoff led to fighting in which about 3,000 people died.

Forces loyal to Ouattara, backed by French and UN troops, captured him in Abidjan in April 2011. He was sent to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the first former head of state in its custody, and tried for crimes against humanity, but was acquitted in 2019, a verdict upheld on appeal in 2021. He returned to Côte d'Ivoire in June 2021 and launched a new party, the PPA-CI.