insisted on a market-based land redistribution policy. The World Bank, another key donor, has itself acknowledged that the Economic Structural Adjustment Plan for Zimbabwe embarked on at its recommendation in 1991 had damaging social consequences, in particular by increasing poverty. The donor community also raised various problems with the way in which the funds provided for land redistribution were disbursed—not least that among the recipients of commercial farmland appropriated under land reform measures were a number of senior political leaders. The Zimbabwean government countered the arguments not least on the basis that the money paid was as a matter of historical obligation rather than development assistance. The international donor community thus does not come with clean hands to the current fast track land reform process. The response of other African countries to Zimbabwe, meanwhile, has been strongly shaped by the history of southern Africa, and the long struggle for an end to colonial and white minority rule. Issues of control over land resonate forcefully in South Africa and Namibia, in particular. Other African states have often supported the Zimbabwe government in its allegations that the response of Britain, in particular, to the land crisis, is essentially racist. At least partly as a consequence of this history, the strong criticism of the fast track program voiced by the British, the European Union (E.U.), and the United States, among others, has not been matched by similar statements from Zimbabwe’s African neighbors. In late 2001, however, both the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and in particular the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) began to take a stronger—though often inconsistent—line in criticizing the disorder and economic chaos unleashed by fast track land redistribution and other developments, and urging President Mugabe to restore the rule of law to the land reform program and the elections scheduled for March 2002. At the same time, many African states have publicly disapproved of sanctions against Zimbabwe introduced by the E.U. and U.S. The Commonwealth, which brings together both rich and poor former colonies of Britain, has been more outspoken, though often divided along racial lines. Colonial policies of expropriation established ownership patterns in which white farmers in Zimbabwe possess large, fertile farms while black rural dwellers barely subsist. There is an urgent and long-standing need to change these unequal and race-based patterns of land occupation; and there are well-developed plans approved by the government of Zimbabwe setting out the means to do so. But the fast track land resettlement program sidesteps these, while laying down an infrastructure for rural violence and intimidation that subordinates development plans to political ends. New kinds of hardship and insecurity are being created for rural Zimbabweans, including in many cases the intended beneficiaries of land reform. While international attention has focused on the plight of white farm owners and on the consequences of illegal expropriations of land for property rights and the macro-economy, it is poor, rural, black, people who have suffered most from the violence that has accompanied the fast track process. It is important that the rule of law be restored to the land reform program; not for the protection of existing commercial farming interests, but to ensure that redistribution of land is carried out fairly and to bring an end to state-sponsored violence and impunity for violent crime. Legal safeguards are imperative to ensure that land redistribution does not result in further discrimination and human rights abuses against those who are supposed to benefit from it. At the same time, there has to be recognition that the fast track land reform program has created new facts on the ground in Zimbabwe. It cannot be a solution to the current crisis simply to use the same arbitrary and violent methods to evict new settlers from the land. Once some sort of stability has been restored, and violence ended, the competing claims of commercial farmers, farm workers, new settlers, and the state to land must be arbitrated by an impartial tribunal with authority to adjudicate disputes over land and allocate title fairly. The international donor community should give generous assistance to efforts to ensure a sustainable settlement to the land question in Zimbabwe. *** During a month-long research visit in the rural areas of Zimbabwe in July 2001, Human Rights Watch interviewed farm workers, farm owners, villagers from communal areas, and settlers in areas resettled during the 1980s, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in rural communities and academics concerned Human Rights Watch 4 March 2002, Vol. 14, No. 1 (A)