Juvénal Habyarimana (March 8, 1937 – April 6, 1994) was President of the Republic of Rwanda from 1973 until 1994. During his 20-year dictatorship he favored his own ethnic group, the Hutus, and supported the Hutu majority in neighboring Burundi against the Tutsi government. On April 6, 1994, he was killed when his airplane, also carrying the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down close to Kigali International Airport. His assassination ignited ethnic tensions in the region and sparked the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide.

On July 5 1973, while serving as defense minister, Habyarimana seized power by overthrowing Grégoire Kayibanda and ousted the then-ruling Parmehutu party. Habyarimana was the leader of the Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement.

In the early 1990s, a rebellion against Habyarimana's government began when rebels from the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) crossed the border from Uganda; the RPF was a force of mostly Tutsi Rwandan expatriates who had defected in masses from the Ugandan army. The French and Zairian/Congolese (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) militaries intervened on behalf of Habyarimana's government forces, and a ceasefire was officially reached in 1993 through the Arusha Accords.