Paper short abstract:

Some women who lost their land and land dispute over a economically interesting road junction which provoked shootings, followed by peace talks shed light on how people and institutions deal with land questions in the newly independent South Sudan.

Paper long abstract:

In post-war and newly independent South Sudan many conceptions of landownership exist. The paper relates two cases of land dispute (which both happened in Eastern Equatoria State, South Sudan) to each other and explains the involvement of the different actors (NGO, Local communities, Government, Church). One of the land cases examines several women who lost their farming land to urbanization, the need of the UN for expansion and to the land claims of the ethnic majority in town. While the new government strengthens the land rights of local communities, local minorities lose their land and, for the moment, silently complain.

The second case describes the processes resulting out of a land dispute causing several death, followed by peace talks about a junction of two roads which got into the attention of two neighboring local communities. Formerly, during civil war, the road was dangerous and the place not to be. Nowadays the road is in the focus of economic actors opening shops at a junction and individuals which desire access to facilities such as schools.

The work is based on one year anthropological research, with focus on different types of actors in the state formation process. Both cases shed lights on the role of the government and local communities in both, creating, solving or ignoring these land disputes and on how so called traditional conflict resolution methods are not adapted to urbanization and the new civil code of South Sudan.