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Analyze

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Sara.Till

1) MSF policy on neutrality: One of the main aspects of humanitarian aid is to remain removed in the conflict at hand, thus assuring unbiased help towards all individuals involved. This comes from neutrality, a tenant stating that MSF and other humanitarian agencies working under MSF will not "pick" or join one side of the conflict nor will they grant a side an advantage. 

2)MSF operations head arrest: At the time of the Sudanese conflict, the Dutch branch of MSF released a report decrying the severe sexual violence perpetrated during fighting. This, in turn, led to the imprisonment and charging of MSF head of mission, Paul Foreman. The MSF report was read in the 2005 Annual International General Assembly, entailing the ongoing violence against women in the Darfur conflict in an attempt to raise awareness about the continued issue. 

3) Darfur Conflict: An major armed conflict started in 2003 with the rebellion of several liberation movements (SLM & JEM) against the Sudanese government. The violence reached a cease fire in 2010 where talks began, propagated by Doha mediators, but an agreement was never met. Thus, violence has continued through 2016, including a chemical weapon attack in September.

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seanw146

Miriam Ticktin is an associate Anthropology professor at The New School. She graduated with a PhD from Stanford University in 2002. “Miriam works at the intersections of the anthropology of medicine and science, law, and transnational and postcolonial feminist theory. Her research has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity: she has been interested in what these claims tell us about universalisms and difference, about who can be a political subject, on what basis people are included and excluded from communities, and how inequalities get instituted or perpetuated in this process. She is the author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Immigration and Humanitarianism in France (UC Press, 2011), co-editor of In the Name of Humanity: the Government of Threat and Care (with Ilana Feldman, Duke UP 2010), and a founding co-editor of the journal Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development.” (from her profile from The New School).

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seanw146

1) International courts came to agreement that gender based acts of violence, such as rape, constitute a crime against humanity.

2)  When gender is erased from the picture it removes the why, what, and how of the incident as well as ting to be uniform in care but also recognizing biological differences between men and women, gender differences and how that changes treatment, care, and outcome.

3) Human rights activists have been championing to address violence against women since the 1980s which later turned into “gender based violence” so that it would broaden the scope to include any gender. 

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seanw146

1) “‘A confusion between humanitarianism and politics–two fundamentally different orders of activity – can only lead to a mutual weakening of both”.

2) “Approaching gender-based violence as a medical or health issue alters how violence is both approached and understood; that is, rather than understanding gender violence in the context of gendered relations of power, or as part of larger histories and expressions of inequality which are inseparable from histories of class or race or colonialism, this type of medicalisation transforms gender-based violence into an emergency illness, requiring immediate intervention.”

3) “Sexual violence elicited a particular form of moral outrage in the MSF report and debate; and the question was how to justify the willingness to condemn the perpetrators in cases of rape more than with other forms of violence or torture. Should women be !C 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Medicalising and Politicising Sexual Violence 259 treated as special categories of victim, who need more protection? Furthermore, are they the only ones recognised as subject to rape? Should sex and sexual violence be seen as crimes apart, or should they be equivalent to any type of harm or injury in times of war? What is the nature of gender-based violence, and how do we qualify the particular vulnerabilities to it?”

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seanw146

1) Gender violence against humanitarian workers.

2) Gender violence that exists within the humanitarian organizations themselves.

3) How gender violence is interpreted and perceived by different cultures.