Land conflict and informal settlements in Juba, South Sudan

Abstract

This article examines urban land conflict in a fragile post-war context, drawing on fieldwork carried out in three informal settlements in Juba, the ‘new’ capital of South Sudan. After the signing of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, Juba experienced unprecedented population growth, accompanied by the expansion and proliferation of informal settlements in which land disputes were erupting, in some instances escalating to violence. Contributing to the recent literature on South Sudan that critiques the framing of land conflict in ethnic terms, this article shows that ethnic tensions were not the primary drivers of land conflicts in the informal settlements under study. Using a political economy framework, it adds a new dimension to understandings of land conflict in Juba by identifying the exploitative terms on which powerful figures such as informal settlement leaders, public officials, military actors and local chiefs intervened in informal land transactions at the expense of poorer informal settlement inhabitants. Land conflict was not merely an outcome of these interventions, but also created opportunities for a range of actors to exploit vulnerable inhabitants.