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Sudan
Index
The right to own property, to bequeath it to heirs, and to
inherit it was established by the Permanent Constitution of 1973;
this right was suspended in 1985. Sudan had long had a system of
land registration through which an individual, an enterprise, or
the government could establish title to a piece of land. Such
registration had been extensive in northern Sudan, especially in
Al Khartum, Al Awsat, and Ash Shamali provinces. Before 1970 all
other land (unregistered) belonged to the state, which held
ownership in trust for the people, who had customary rights to
it. In 1970 the Unregistered Land Act declared that all waste,
forest, and unregistered lands were government land. Before the
act's passage, the government had avoided interfering with
individual customary rights to unregistered land, and in the late
1980s it again adhered to this policy.
The government owned most of the land used by the modern
agricultural sector and leased it to tenants (for example, the
Gezira Scheme) or to private entrepreneurs, such as most
operators of large-scale mechanized rainfed farming. In the late
1980s, however, the great area of land used for pasture and for
subsistence cultivation was communally owned under customary land
laws that varied somewhat by location but followed a broadly
similar pattern. In agricultural communities, the right to
cultivate an area of unused land became vested in the individual
who cleared it for use. The rights to such land could be passed
on to heirs, but ordinarily the land could not be sold or
otherwise disposed of. The right was also retained to land left
in fallow, although in Bahr al Ghazal, Aali an Nil, and Al
Istiwai there were communities where another individual could
claim such land by clearing it.
Among the
transhumant (see Glossary)
communities of the
north, the rights to cultivated land were much the same, but the
dominant position of livestock in community activities had
introduced certain other communal rights that included common
rights to grazing land, the right-of-way to water and grazing
land, the right to grass on agricultural land unless the occupier
cut and stacked it, and the right to crop residues unless
similarly treated. In the western savannas, private ownership of
stands of hashab trees could be registered, an exception
to the usual government ownership of the forests. But dead wood
for domestic fuel and the underlying grass were common property.
Water, a matter of greatest importance to stock raisers, was open
to all if free standing, but wells that had been dug and the
associated drinking troughs were private property and were
retained by the digger season after season. In northern Sudan,
especially in the western savanna where increasing population and
animal numbers have placed pressure on the land, violations of
customary laws and conflicts between ethnic groups over land
rights have been growing. Resolution of these problems has been
attempted by local government agencies but only on a case-by-case
basis.
Data as of June 1991
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