1. Introduction When IDP camps were closed at the end of the 2 decade conflict in Northern Uganda. Former IDP were confronted with either ‘Return’ or ‘Resettlement’ For resettlement, people moved to new locations while returned, people headed back to where they had been displaced from. The resettled found themselves confronted with a general land for production access problem while the returned although they had access to land, the land had various caveats. Both categories of former IDPs aimed to have secure tenure to the land they accessed, which should have guaranteed personal development plans, which in turn should have guided production activities in a manner that would have led to incomes that at the very least should have been sufficient to sustain their households. The essence of this paper was to establish whether ‘returned’ and ‘resettled’ former IDPs; be it female or male, were comparable in terms of having personal development plans and having sufficient income to sustain their households and whether land tenure/ land tenure characteristics played a role in observed distinctions. To obtain empirical clarification of the results, the two former IDP categories are compared with a control group, composed of individuals who were never displaced and are subsisting on tenure regarded as secure. Materials and methods Panel data collected from 7 PRDP implementing regions and 1 control region was used. Data from surveys conducted in 3 consecutive years (2012, 2013 and 2014) was used. The numbers of respondents used in this study were 3710, 3941 and 3357 for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively. Study areas were grouped by the manner in which conflict was experienced. The categories include: severely affected areas of Acholi (Gulu, Amuru, Kitgum and Lamwo) and Karamoja (Abim, Moroto and Kotido); sporadically affected areas of Lango (Otuke, Lira) and West Nile (Adjumani, Yumbe, Arua and Zombo); the spillover study areas of Bukedi (Tororo), Bunyoro (Kiryandongo), Elgon (Mbale) and Teso (Soroti and Amuria). The control region was composed of Mbarara and Masaka districts. Logistic regression was employed to formally test the relationship between the tenure on which one subsists and having a personal development plan and/or sufficient income to sustain their households, The influence of gender on these perceptions was also tested. Results Table: Distribution of respondents by gender and tenure status in the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 NB: Control = Formal tenure in Control region; More formal = More formal tenure in PRDP implementing region (resettled communities); Informal=Informal tenure in PRDP implementing region (returned communities) Table: Influence of tenure status on perceptions about having personal development plans NB: *Not significant; Tenure disaggregation 1 = Formal (Control), 2 = More formal (resettled communities), 3 = Informal (returned communities); Gender 0 = Female, 1 = Male; OR=Odds Ratio Table: Influence of tenure status on perceptions about having sufficient income to sustain own household NB: *Not significant; Tenure disaggregation 1 = Formal (Control), 2 = More formal (resettled communities), 3 = Informal (returned communities); Gender 0 = Female, 1 = Male; OR=Odds Ratio Observations: Fair representation of both sexes, in all the three surveys. Respondents on formal tenure (both in the control and resettled communities) had higher odds of having development plans than those on informal tenure (returned communities). Females were consistently associated with lower odds of having development plans. Respondents on formal tenure (both in the control and resettled communities) had higher odds of having sufficient income to sustain their households than those on informal tenure. Females had lower odds of having sufficient income than males (in 2013 and 2014). Conclusions There is a vibrant land market in customary land tenure in northern Uganda. Customary tenure is transforming; and the desire for negotiated land access that tends to be more formal, individualized and therefore secure within the customary setting in northern Uganda is a matter that must be paid attention to by scholars and land reform practitioners. Higher percentages of respondents under more formal customary tenure (resettled communities) reporting more access to increased economic opportunities, better business vibrancy, weekly incomes of 10,000 Uganda Shillings (About US$ 4) or more, odds of having development plans comparable to those of the control region and significantly higher chances of earning sufficient income to sustain their households. Results point to the need to reconsider the manner in which development programmes like the PRDP invest in livelihood interventions in post conflict farming communities. Priority is usually given to ‘returned’ rather than ‘resettled’ communities yet the latter seem to be more efficient producers than the former. The distinctions relate to tenure characteristics in the different communities. Herbert Kamusiime and Lawrence Lubyayi Associates Research Uganda director@aresearchug.org DOES LAND TENURE INFLUENCE VARIABILITY IN HAVING PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS AND SUFFICIENT INCOME TO SUSTAIN HOUSEHOLDS IN POST CONFLICT COMMUNITIES IN UGANDA? Acknowledgements: The Ford Foundation for availing resources that enabled the analysis and writing of this paper by the Young Researchers Forum Margaret Rugadya and Eddie Nsamba-Gayiya for technical guidance in the course of writing this paper