Peter Justin: Grounding land governance- Land conflicts, local governance and decentralization in post-conflict South Sudan

Peter Justin succesfully defended his PhD at Wageningen University on 7 December 2020.

Grounding Land Governance in South Sudan investigates how local (land) governance evolves in South Sudan, a post-conflict setting where state authorities have been largely absent as a result of the protracted North – South civil wars.  The project builds on the premise that land conflicts in post-conflict settings are major sources of tenure insecurity, mostly as a result of legacies of civil wars; which could be experienced through displacement of civilians, dispossession of land, and erosion of governing institutions that could potentially regulate land access and resolve lands disputes.   The way how land access is regulated and land conflicts resolved in such settings greatly determine whether land tenure would contribute to development or become a stake to other conflicts.  The project falls under the theme ‘poverty and hunger’.   

This protect started on February 2011, and is expected to continue till the end of January 2015.   Following the initial phase of desk-research, the project conducted a fieldwork in the South Sudanese County of Yei (Central Equatoria State) for a period of nineteen months (November 2011 – April 2013), and is at the writing phase at the moment; based on publication of four scientific articles.