over agricultural production activities and benefits, negatively impacting on the productive capacity of women. 144 There are no studies available of the effects of the fast track resettlement scheme on women specifically. However, the lack of infrastructure such as schools and markets in the resettled areas is likely to affect women more seriously than men, since women are the principal subsistence farmers, are less likely to have access to casual cash-paid work, and are more responsible for child care. Some accounts suggested that some of the young men who had left to take up plots in the fast track resettlement farms had abandoned their wives in the communal areas and taken new women as partners; alternatively, that women had accompanied their husbands, but finding that the situation in the resettled areas was worse then the home they had left, had returned to their previous houses.145 Because women are not regarded as having title to land they are vulnerable to men who wish to exploit their labor either in the communal or resettlement areas. Other accounts indicated that some women seeking allocation of a plot under the fast track scheme had been forced to exchange sexual favors to get on the redistribution lists and that war veterans and Zanu-PF militia members had raped women in the course of the land occupations. In April 2000, for example, two girls aged sixteen and eighteen were raped at a school in Mutoko where war veterans and other people were gathered waiting to be allocated land. The alleged perpetrators were arrested about one week later, when the girls reported to the police. Attempts by lawyers to follow up on the prosecution of the cases with the police were met only with insults.146 The participation of women in the resettlement program, and the violence to which they have been subjected urgently needs further investigation. Impunity for sexual assault and rape must be ended, and issues of discrimination addressed. Displacement and Marginalization of Farm Workers In many ways, those most disadvantaged by the fast track land reform program are farm workers. Prior to the recent crisis, there 300,000 to 400,000 wage-earning workers on commercial farms, perhaps one quarter of the formal sector labor force and between 11 and 18 percent of the total population. 147 Perhaps 25 percent of these are of foreign descent, mainly Malawian, Mozambican, or Zambian, though their families may have lived in Zimbabwe for several generations. Many of these do not have documents establishing Zimbabwean citizenship, either lacking papers altogether or carrying national identific ation cards bearing the designation “alien.” Prior to the current crisis on farms, farm workers were already the lowest paid workers in the formal sector in Zimbabwe, often housed in poor conditions, and with inadequate access to schooling, health care, and other services—though, following independence, and under pressure from unions and NGOs working with farm workers, increasing numbers of farmers did improve the conditions of service for their labor.148 Farm workers are vulnerable to arbitrary eviction in old age especially, when they no longer able to work. Female farm workers, in turn, are more likely than men to be employed on short term contracts for casual work, and less likely to have permanent employment with housing included as part of the package. 144 Women and Land Lobby Group, “Report on WLLG workshop on Women’s Land Rights, held 27-28 November 2000,” (Harare, WLLG, 2001), as quoted in Gender and Constitutional Issues (Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, January 2001), p.15. 145 Human Rights Watch interviews, Musasa resettlement area, July 18, 2001; communal area, Chimanimani, July 17, 2001; NGO experts, Harare, July 2001. 146 Human Rights Watch interview, NGO workers, Harare, July 12, 2001, and subsequent email confirmation. 147 Dede Amanor-Wilks, Zimbabwe’s Farm Workers and the New Constitution, February 12, 2000, available on the Africa Policy Information Center home page, www.africapolicy.org, accessed December 21, 2001; UNDP Interim Mission Report, January 2002, p.35. 148 Nevertheless, only 59 percent of farm workers’ children attended primary school in 1997, compared to 79 percent of children in communal areas and 89 percent of urban children. Land, Power and Poverty: Farm workers and the crisis in Zimbabwe (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR), 2000), p.23. Human Rights Watch 32 March 2002, Vol. 14, No. 1 (A)