Land Tenure and Legal Pluralism in the Peace Process

Land tenure has proven to be one of the most vexing issues in a peace process. The disintegration of land and property rights institutions during armed conflict yet the importance of land and property to the conduct of conflict present particular dilemmas for a peace process attempting to reconfigure aspects of societal relations important to recovery. In this regard understanding what happens to land tenure as a set of social relations during and subsequent to armed conflict is important to the derivation of useful tools for managing tenure issues in a peace process. This article examines the development of multiple, informal “normative orders” regarding land tenure during armed conflict and how these are brought together in problematic form in a peace process. While there can be significant development of tenurial legal pluralism during armed conflict, it is during a peace process that problems associated with different approaches to land claim, access, use, and disputing become especially acute, because an end to hostilities drives land issues to the fore for large numbers of people over a short time frame.