ABSTRACT
Land is very much at the heart of the violence that has plagued Darfur. It is essential not only to attain a livelihood, but also for identity and political representation, to the extent that land is inseparable from political power. The traditional land tenure system in Darfur was developed during the Darfur sultanate, which reigned from the seventeenth century until 1916 when it was destroyed by the British. The conflict in Darfur also exhibits the intrinsic link between ethnicity and issues of indigenousness characteristic of Sons of the Soil (SoS) conflicts. The large-scale in-migration experienced by Darfur after Sudan's 1956 independence has contributed to explosive population growth. While the civil war in Darfur started only in 2003, violent conflicts between various communities, primarily over scarce resources such as land, have been ongoing for decades. Government bias has also been a critical factor for the outbreak of numerous violent communal conflicts since the mid-1980s in Sudan.
