PhD Defence: Sharing Scarcity. Land Access and Social Relations in Southeast Rwanda
Margot Leegwater will defend her PhD thesis Sharing Scarcity: Land Access and Social Relations in Southeast Rwanda at the VU University. Land is a crucial yet scarce resource in Rwanda, where about 90% of the population is engaged in subsistence farming, and access to land is increasingly becoming a source of conflict. This study examines the effects of land-access and land-tenure policies on local community relations, including ethnicity, and land conflicts in post-conflict rural Rwanda. Social relations have been characterized by (ethnic) tensions, mistrust, grief and frustration since the end of the 1990-1994 civil war and the 1994 genocide.