Land governance reforms are part of donor-sponsored liberal peacebuilding projects which have state-building as one of their core elements. After the end of the civil war with Sudan (1983–2005), South Sudan undertook a process of institution-building and policy-making supported by international donors to create a decentralised system based on local ‘communities’ and their ‘traditional authorities’. Communal customary rights to land have been legalised to reduce rural people's economic vulnerability and satisfy one of the major grievances that led to war. In fact, the land reform encouraged the overlapping between the spheres of local state administration and the ethnic community ruled by traditional authorities. To date this has appeared to strengthen ethnic affiliation as a means to access resources and enrich government officers’ repertoires for claiming control over the territory on behalf of the ‘community’, thereby increasing competition in a context marked by the militarisation of ethnic identity.
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