Displacement, Land Grabs, and Post-Conflict Property Regimes in South Sudan

Post-conflict land disputes are often framed as administrative or legal problems, yet in South Sudan they reflect a deeper transformation of property relations driven by war and displacement. The concept of a conflict-shaped property regime captures how mass displacement has produced overlapping systems of statutory law, customary claims, wartime occupation, and commercial appropriation. The result is not simply institutional ambiguity, but a durable political economy of contested return, accumulation, and instability. Situated within debates on property rights, political ecology, and post-conflict land governance, the manuscript examines how displacement restructures land tenure in ways that outlast the conflict itself. Focusing on South Sudan, with comparative reference to Rwanda, Liberia, and Timor-Leste, the study addresses three interrelated questions: how the displacement of over four million people—through internal movement and cross-border refuge—has reshaped both de facto and de jure land tenure systems, and what forms of conflict emerge upon return; to what extent land acquisition by military commanders, government officials, and returning diaspora constitutes a strategy of accumulation enabled by displacement and governance breakdown, and how this interacts with customary tenure; and which institutional arrangements—land registries, dispute resolution mechanisms, and transitional justice for property claims—have proven effective in comparative contexts, and with what relevance for South Sudan. Methodologically, the study combines remote sensing analysis of land-use change in conflict-affected areas with legal analysis of the South Sudan Land Act (2009) and customary tenure systems. It further draws on interviews with internally displaced persons (IDP) leaders