Property
Registered title over a minority of land, with unregistered land vested in the state
The Land Settlement and Registration Act 1925 established registration, and the Unregistered Land Act 1970 vested all unregistered land in the state. Customary holdings across much of the country therefore lack formal title, which is central to the Darfur conflicts.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Federal states administer land within national framework legislation.
Governing law
- Land Settlement and Registration Act 1925
- Unregistered Land Act 1970
- Civil Transactions Act 1984 — property and security provisions
In practice
The 1970 Act is the historically decisive instrument: by declaring all unregistered land to be state property it converted customary holdings across the west and south into occupation without title, and the resulting insecurity is directly implicated in the land and grazing conflicts in Darfur and Kordofan. Registration under the 1925 regime was concentrated in the Nile valley and the irrigated schemes, so the map of formal title tracks the historical centre of the state rather than the distribution of population. Hawakeer, the customary tribal land administration in Darfur, has no clean statutory equivalent, and successive peace agreements including the 2020 Juba Agreement promised land commissions and restitution mechanisms that were not established before the current war. Given mass displacement and the destruction of records, current land administration cannot be verified.