Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2026)
Displacement, Land Grabs, and Post-Conflict Property Regimes in South Sudan
Prof. Abraham Kuol Nyuon, PhD
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19563959
Published: April 14, 2026
Abstract
This article develops conflict-shaped property regime as an analytical lens for understanding property rights, displacement, and hybrid land governance after conflict. Rather than treating land, displacement, and the political economy of post-conflict property rights as a descriptive case, the manuscript argues that mass displacement in South Sudan has produced a layered property regime in which statutory law, customary claims, wartime occupation, and commercial appropriation overlap; the result is not merely administrative confusion but a durable political economy of contested return and accumulation. Anchored in Property rights theory (North; De Soto — critically); post-conflict land governance (Unruh; Pantuliano); political ecology (Peluso & Watts). Develops a theory of 'conflict-induced property regime transformation' — how mass displacement permanently restructures land tenure systems in ways that drive continued instability. the paper translates the topic brief into three linked questions: How has the mass displacement of over four million South Sudanese — through both internal movement and cross-border refuge — transformed the de facto and de jure land tenure landscape, and what conflicts does this transformation generate upon return? To what extent is land-grabbing by military commanders, government officials, and returning diaspora a deliberate strategy of accumulation enabled by displacement and governance collapse — and how does this interact with customary land tenure systems? What institutional arrangements — in terms of land registry, dispute adjudication, and transitional justice for property crimes — have succeeded in managing post-conflict land conflict in comparative cases (Rwanda, Liberia, Timor-Leste), and what is their applicability to South Sudan?
Read the Full Article
The HTML galley is loaded below for inline reading and better discovery.
How to Cite
Prof. Abraham Kuol Nyuon, PhD (2026). Displacement, Land Grabs, and Post-Conflict Property Regimes in South Sudan. African Property Law Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2026). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19563959
Keywords
Landdisplacementproperty rightsSouth Sudanpost-conflictIDPtenurecustomary
Research Snapshot
Desktop reading viewLanguage
EN
Formats
HTML + PDF
Publication Track
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2026)
Current Journal
African Property Law Journal