The Political Economy of Land Restitution in Post-Conflict Northern Uganda: Assessing Customary Tenure Systems

Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies | Vol. 3, No. 5, May 2012 | pp. 144–152

DOI: 10.46882/2012/GJPCS/000040

Research Article

The Political Economy of Land Restitution in Post-Conflict Northern Uganda: Assessing Customary Tenure Systems

Florence Aloyo¹

¹Faculty of Law, Gulu University, Gulu, Uganda

Abstract: Unresolved land ownership disputes represent a primary structural barrier to sustainable economic recovery and social reconciliation in post-war societies. This study evaluates the early institutional performance of land restitution frameworks within agricultural communities in Northern Uganda following long-term population displacement. Utilizing empirical field data collected from 480 households across three districts, we deploy multivariate linear regressions to measure claim processing times and returnee security indices. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the average time required to settle a customary land dispute is 16.4 ± 2.5 months, with severe bottlenecks caused by the destruction of community-level geographic memories. Crucially, returning families who secured legal tenure certification experienced a 34% reduction in intra-communal boundary violence (p < 0.05). However, structural equation modeling shows that the exclusion of widows from customary lineage-based inheritance matrices remains a systemic limitation. The paper concludes that legal land restitution programs fail unless integrated with local customary mediation mechanisms and micro-credit extensions for agrarian rehabilitation.

Keywords: land restitution, political economy, Northern Uganda, customary tenure, boundary disputes, agrarian rehabilitation

Manuscript Timeline: Received January 15, 2012; Revised March 04, 2012; Accepted April 02, 2012; Published May 18, 2012.

Citation: Aloyo, F. (2012). The Political Economy of Land Restitution in Post-Conflict Northern Uganda: Assessing Customary Tenure Systems. Global Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, 3(5), 144–152. DOI: 10.46882/2012/GJPCS/000040

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