For two decades now, since 2005, Northern Bahr el Ghazal (NBG), a state to the Northwest of South Sudan on the border with Sudan’s East and South Darfur and West Kordofan states, has experienced two waves of returns. The first wave was between 2005 and 2009 following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended the second war (1983–2005) between North and South of Sudan. The second wave was in 2023 following the outbreak of civil war in Sudan in April 2023 which forced several South Sudanese who had lived there to return. The returnees to NBG consisted of those who had fled the 2013 civil war and the economic inflation that plagued the country in 2015. Some returnees were families who had fled the second war and famines in the 1980s/90s and had never returned to NBG since 2005 when the war ended.

However, unlike the post-2005 returns where the local response to resettling returnees respected returnees’ choices on where to settle, the state government has done very little in response to the recent wave of returns, despite its response rhetoric, and most returnee families now face several livelihood challenges. Among these challenges is finding land for settlement, especially in areas with some economic and livelihood advantages. The rapid commodification of land in recent years has made access to land for residence and cultivation difficult for those without money. This article reviews the post-war returns and trends of land commodification and access restraints. It then assesses the implications of land scarcity for the returnees’ recovery and livelihood reconstruction in NBG following the outbreak of war in Sudan. It argues that the failure of the state government to facilitate the resettlement of returnee families in areas where they could work for wages or run informal businesses makes it difficult for them to reconstruct their livelihoods. The state’s policy of relegating them to rural areas with limited economic opportunities and basic services increases their vulnerability, exposes them to exploitation, and increases their dependence on aid. This will exacerbate not only livelihood conditions, sparking the rise in the rate of crimes, but also cases of early forced marriages and gender-based violence which several agencies are working to eliminate.

This article is based on years of research on livelihood choices and cross-border labour mobility in NBG, supplemented with an analysis of data gathered through various online sources, news, and other published reports.

The trends of land commodification and access restraint in the post-2005 period

The commodification of land in NBG is linked to the post-2005 mass returns following the end of the second war and the economic transformations that followed it. Between 2005 and 2009, NBG received over 400,000 returnees, mostly from Northern Sudan where they had lived as IDPs, and in 2009, their numbers accounted for 51 per cent of the total state population (IOM 2009).

In response to mass returns, the state government and traditional authority leaders allocated large swathes of empty land in the suburbs of Aweil and other local towns to house the returnees upon their request. In Aweil town, returnees were resettled in Apada and part of Maper residential areas. Others were settled in the suburb of Nyamlel, around Mabil outside Wanyjok and War Alel in Gok Machar towns. The comparative satellite maps of Aweil town above, one taken in 2003 shortly before the war ended, and the other taken ten years later in 2015, show how much Aweil has expanded as a result of mass post-war return.

Members of the host communities – through encouragement from chiefs – also gave pieces of farmland for returnee families to cultivate. Alel, a fertile land to the west of Aweil, which was sparsely populated due to insecurities in the second war period, became the farming zone for several returnee families who settled in Aweil town. They were donated farmlands free by members of the host community.

In 2010s, several factors converged to increase the pace of land commodification. This, in turn, undermined the traditional system of land ownership, access, and use which did not include monetary payment. The overcrowding of towns from returns in the post-2005 period and IDPs fleeing inter- and intra-communal fighting in neighbouring states like Warrap and villages close to the border with Sudan exerted pressure on the local food market – which partly depended on food imported from Northern Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan regions affecting market grain prices. Prices were further complicated by the fighting between the SPLA and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) over the control of disputed borderland territories affecting the cross-border mobility of goods from Sudan. This included fighting over the Kiir River, which approximately delineates the border between Sudan and South Sudan (2007); the enclave of Abyei  (2008); and Heglig oilfields to the East of Abyei (in 2012) plunging local markets in NBG into severe food shortages.

In response to increased food shortages, local elites began to invest in commercial farming to fill the growing food deficit and benefit from high grain prices. Local traders and some military and political elites with cash subsequently flocked to the suburbs of Aweil town and other distant places with fertile soil and good accessibility to buy up, lease, or rent farmlands from local owners. This sped up the pace of land commodification, extending its monetization to rural communal lands.

The monetization of land saw a growing restraint of access for those without cash.  It also increased land-related disputes, and land grabs by powerful groups seeking to accumulate more land further complicating its access (Saferworld 2021). For example, in 2013 the governor of NBG attempted to evict the returnee households from Apada with a plan to turn the area into a private fruits and vegetable farm. Private accumulation of land by people with power at the expense of the poor is also evidenced in Udhum, Ayai, and Tonj Chol which have the three largest privately owned semi-mechanized rain-fed agricultural farms acquired without the approval from members of the respective communities (FAO/WFP report 2022).

When South Sudan began to experience economic downturn in 2015, when land was becoming an important commodity, the landlords in Alel who had donated farmlands to returnee households began to charge rents to raise cash or evicted those who could not afford it. Even other elites who had purchased large swathes of land and allowed returnees or their relatives to cultivate on free land began to charge rents when the state coffer was running dry and rents received from land or landed properties or its sales were becoming alternative sources of cash incomes to fund their patron/client networks. This rapid monetization of land increased competition and conflicts over it. Recent surveys in Aweil and other towns, for example, have revealed numerous cases of land grabs. In Kuom, the state minister of finance, aided by state police, evicted several households of former returnees who had settled there in the 2010s. Reports from Maper West, Riang Aluelweng, and Maduany residential areas in the suburbs of Aweil included several cases of land grabs by groups with government or military authority. This also included several localized conflicts over ownership of farmlands and the rights to sell or rent them out.

As a result, the commodification of land complicated land access, ownership, and use rights for many, both for residence and farming in NBG. Coupled with the 2015 economic collapse and lack of employment opportunities, many people migrated or were displaced back across the border to Sudan where they looked for work or lived as refugees until the 2023 war broke out forcing them to return home (UNHCR 2017).

Post-independence cross-border displacements and returns

Starting in 2015, people in NBG began to move across the border to Sudan again. This was due to a combination of multiple factors. The South Sudan government’s closure of its oil pipeline transiting through Sudan in 2012 following the dispute over the SPLA’s brief occupation of Heglig resulted in a significant loss in revenue and sparked economic crisis in the country. The crisis was later exacerbated by the 2013 internal wars that marked South Sudan’s independence. The conflict was followed by the subsequent collapse of the South Sudan Pound (SSP) when the World Bank advised the government to devalue its currency – further immiserating people’s livelihoods (Jemimah 2015). Coupled with a poor harvest in 2016 due to poor rain resulting in long drought, spiralling food prices, and increased eviction of returnee families from farmlands they had been donated in earlier years, more households turned to sending members across the border to find work on the farms and gold mines in Sudan as an alternative to improving household incomes. Women-headed households, with no support from relatives, permanently migrated and settled in camps as refugees with most of them in East Darfur’s Kario camp, El Meiram in West Kordofan, and in other cities where they received food aid in addition to working for wages in the nearby farms and homes (ILO 2021). When the war broke out in Sudan, South Sudanese who had lived there as refugees and labour migrants were forced to return to their country.

Since May 2023, the state has received a significant number of returnees from Sudan arriving from East Darfur or West Kordofan. They entered NBG through Kiir Adem, Majok Nyin Thiou, or Abyei crossing points. Some returnees from NBG entered South Sudan from Jodha crossing to Renk, where the IOM airlifted them later to Aweil and Wau airports. By December 2023, the IOM had registered 30,000 returnees in NBG. The recent RSF attacks and advances in East Darfur and West Kordofan, including the capture of El Fula and El Meiram towns, have pushed more returnees into NBG suggesting that the current number of returnees is likely to be higher than this figure.

Local responses to returns

In response to returnees and the influx of refugees from Sudan, the NBG state government formed a 13-member task force committee headed by the state governor. The task force was to welcome and resettle the displaced, mobilize support from the national and international governments, and coordinate humanitarian responses to address the crisis. Following its formation, the task force along with local leaders allocated land in Wedweil, a village along the old railway on the main road connecting Nyamlel and Aweil town. It also transported the displaced, waiting on the border, to the allocated land, marking the opening of a new camp.

However, in a surprise turn of events, the task force committee, as soon as the new camp was opened, asked the returnees to move out of the camp at Wedweil. Unlike the post-CPA returns where returnees were assisted to settle in places they had chosen, the returnees who fled the recent war in Sudan were advised to return to the original villages and homes they had fled from. This, despite some families never having returned since the 1980s/90s when they fled the second war and famines. They were directed to register with the local Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) through which they would be tracked and provided with aid support. Returnees refusing to leave, citing loss of connection with their villages of origin, were subject to forced removals.

The task force justified the abrupt closure of camps for fear it would create an aid-dependent population. Though this reason sounds plausible, other reasons the task force expelled returnees back to their ancestral villages were: 1) the NBG state sought to avoid the service provision burdens that would come with the new camp, especially in the case of an economically struggling government that had nothing to give returnees; and 2) commodification of land under the new land use system meant that no community was willing to donate land to house the new arrivals.

As a result, returnees dispersed in different directions to fend for themselves. Those with relatives could join them and those without moved between towns. They slept in churches and schools as they struggled to find food and accommodation. It wasn’t only the NBG state that abandoned the displaced. Returnees from NBG who entered South Sudan through Renk and who were later airlifted to Aweil airport were paid a meagre amount before they were abandoned to find their own way. Several returnee families reported they spent days under trees as they struggled to figure out where they could go. And despite the show of solidarity from the state and local communities, the returnee families who sought to live close to towns to look for paid work to generate cash income could not find land to settle on. This forced many returnees to move into the rural areas where access to communal land is less restricted, yet putting more burden on underfunded local governments at counties and payam levels.

The failure of the state government to address returnees’ land access needs in areas with some potential economic benefits has and will have negative implications for returnees’ economic livelihood recovery, reconstruction, and access to basic public services.

Implications for returns

In NBG today, many households depend on cash to supplement the little food they produce on their household farms, and to some extent the food aid they receive. Cash income used to purchase food is raised from informal businesses, farm wages, and remittances mostly from Sudan, especially before the start of the war. This means that the ability of a household to diversify its income sources to cope with endemic hunger is dependent on sending one of its members across the border or to the local cities to find work, access to markets to run an informal business, or is dependent on their proximity to commercial farms during the agricultural season to work for wages. These opportunities, most particularly wage work in local farms and informal businesses, both of which are women-dominated, are available in towns and commercial farms and hence remain less accessible to those located in remote areas. In addition to the current economic challenges arising from a weak governance system, the inability of the returnee families, most of which are women-headed households, to access land in areas with some economic opportunities to generate income to pay for food and other needs holds major implications for post-return recovery, reconstruction, and access to basic services.

Many returnee families in NBG arrived with nothing. A war displacement journey meant they either left everything behind or lost what they had with them on the way (MSF 2023). The vulnerability of women-headed households, compounded by the failure of the state’s task force to provide appropriate support, undermined the possibility of livelihood reconstruction for the returnee families despite their receiving meagre aid from INGOs.

The monetization of livelihoods in NBG has in recent decades undermined the traditional ‘gang labour system’, where members of extended families provided free labour to cultivate or construct a house for its vulnerable members. This has made it hard for vulnerable households or members of extended families to find unpaid labour even from their close relatives. Since returnee families have settled in rural areas with fewer economic opportunities such as wage work or markets where women could run informal businesses to raise some cash incomes (see Malou 2024), and are equally unable to access free communal labour from members of their extended families, they would find it difficult to recover from the shock of displacement. Instead, host households with some cash income would likely exploit their labour for economic advantage. The exploitation of returnee labour on the commercial farms, towns, household farms and cattle camps of rich people in NBG is well-researched (see Kindersley and Majok 2019; 2022), however, current returnees’ resettlement terms in remote villages would likely be worse as households in villages have lower incomes and wage rates are lower. Without economic opportunities, returnee households would remain dependent on aid for shelter, food, health and education for the unforeseeable future.

Lack of land has also prompted some returnee families to seek shelter in villages prone to flooding (Saferworld 2021). As a result, many returnees are now victims of the current devastating flooding that has engulfed the most parts of NBG exacerbating their immiseration. The flooding and its possible deepening of the humanitarian crisis was predicted by international agencies, the UN, and researchers. However, it remained unavoidable for returnees as they were unable to afford land on high areas to resettle and cultivate on.

It is therefore worth noting that the manner in which the state responded to the recent returns will have detrimental consequences both on returnees and the state at large. With increasing immiseration partly linked to restraint in land access, practices such as forced and early marriages as well as gender-based violence, despite already being prevalent (see Akele 2020), will worsen in spite of the persistent humanitarian responses to eliminate them. Poor households would seek to give away their daughters in marriage – no matter their ages or consents – as the available option to mobilize resources to elevate their sufferings.

The lack of employment opportunities locally and migration options for young people also present the risk of exacerbating the rates of petty crimes and insecurity across the state. In June 2023, the local authorities in NBG recorded 54 cases of GBV. The local authorities also recorded a total of 364 criminal cases between July and August of the same year, higher than any time before that. Most of these crimes were theft-related. Of all, 183 were petty theft cases and 57 were theft cases that involved severe injuries. With the humanitarian situation worsening due to the current devastating flooding, the returnees’ livelihood recovery will remain bleak, undermining the humanitarian protection programming in the region and the country at large.

Another implication in the current returnees’ resettlement term is the exacerbation of the worsening basic public services provision in the rural areas. Access to quality basic services in rural NBG is dire and worsening every year. Since 2015 when South Sudan’s economy collapsed, public basic services provision also crumbled countrywide and people’s access to basic services became difficult. The delay in civil servant salary payments followed suit. With prices of food commodities and other goods skyrocketing, many qualified teachers and medical staff in local health facilities left to look for better-paid jobs leaving behind the less qualified. In NBG, which borders Sudan, many teachers in the rural government schools quit their jobs and moved into the towns such as Aweil, Wau or further to Juba to find better-paid work with NGOs or private schools. Others moved across the border to find work in Sudan.

Since then, schools in the rural NBG have never recovered and health facilities continue to struggle, operational only through international humanitarian support (HPF report 2020). This is not to mention water and security, particularly in areas close to the border with Sudan like Rumaker which suffers chronic water shortage and insecurity and where several struggling returnee families from Aweil East County who arrived from Sudan are now camping.

With the returnees pushed into the struggling rural areas, it is more likely they will add more burdens on the already underfunded local governments as they require support with basic needs such as security, water, education, and medical treatment for their children besides their shelter and food. The failure of the state task force to better understand and take appropriate measures to respond to returns will worsen the already dire situation in the rural areas.

In conclusion, in the context of dwindling humanitarian project funding as the backdrop of the worsening humanitarian situation, humanitarian agencies must adopt a broader approach that tie food security, economic resilience, and protection needs interventions to economic empowerment such as transforming gender norms and fair access to land and other economic opportunities. This can be achieved through increased advocacy and collaboration with the state and local level governments.

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