Land Ownership in an Age of Scarcity: A Reflection on Peace Building

In their outlooks and analyses, scholars and policymakers with globalist lenses often overlook the local characteristic dynamic of violence or peacebuilding. This paper fills this gap of monist conception or reductive reading of the contours of peacebuilding. By using a praxeological method, this paper identifies land ownership as the driving force behind the possibility of community violence or peacebuilding at the local level. I develop this analysis in three steps. First, I indicate the bases for land ownership in the Sankuru region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa. Second, I explain the indispensable values of land ownership. Lastly, to promote peacebuilding, I propose solutions that can either defuel the conflict of land ownership where it already exists or prevent violence where it has not existed.

Keywords: Land Ownership, Scarcity, Peacebuilding, Violence, Values, Solidarity.