That humanitarian aid struggles to address gender-based violence, such as sexual assault and rape, and even as it has become more addressed and medicalised it has potential to break down in due to the neutral stance taken by foundations such as MSF.
There was a thorough amount of research and sources found bothf rom articles and books that she used to shape her article and arguement, as well as for her analysis.
Miriam Ticktin is an associate professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and Co-Director of Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility. her main areas of interest include immigration and politics that interact with universal humanitarinism. Her work is related to some of the topics we cover, such as at-risk groups and mobility post-disaster, as well as current potential new health stresses on the world due to politics and immigration.
Articles such as Transnational humanitarianism
And in the book Gender, Development and Disasters
She references multiple articles and drew on her own knowledge and experience in order to argue her onclusion that humanitarianism is not equipped to handle such crimes currently.
"To return to the story: with humanitarians effectively governing in crisis zones, it is not surprising that gender-based violence should become an issue; having been categorised as a human rights violation, one which garnered significant attention, it could not be easily ignored or brushed aside as a ‘private’ matter. Still, approaching gender-based violence as a humanitarian issue required some translation. Humanitarians are primarily concerned with saving lives and relieving suffering; humanitarianism of the sort practised by MSF is most significantly focused on health, and the lives and wellbeing of populations."
"The complications of treating gender-based violence as a humanitarian issue were raised early on by MSF in their work in the Congo Republic. In his essay, Marc Le Pape discusses how, because of rape and violence perpetrated by groups of armed men who set up roadblocks and then proceeded to do as they pleased with those they trapped, humanitarians had to decide whether to accept military escorts on aid convoys to protect against such roadblocks, again with serious political repercussions. Caritas did eventually allow trucks to carry military escorts, yet these escorts in turn invited their friends – armed militiamen – onto the trucks, even as they carried with them the spoils of their plunder"
"Humanitarianism’s mission has expanded so that it now occupies a dominant place in the global political arena – whether humanitarians asked for this or not. But the incorporation of genderbased violence shows humanitarianism at its limit; gender relations and gender-based violence cannot be contained by forms of crisis-driven, moral and medical intervention. In other words, this type of politics based on protecting a universal humanity cannot do all our political work for us; such violence renders visible inequalities that are simply unmanageable and unchangeable by its methods."
Miriam heavily references an article published by MSF about what they could have done better post-Congo
She also references media analysis and reports by other humanitarian organisations on the same topic.
Finally she uses this knowledge to argue that humanitarian aid and/or politics needs rethinking because of these faults in incorporating gender-based issues
Conflict in the DRC
MSF's response to sex crimes
Hamanitarian organisations more slated towards sexual crimes