Miriam Ticktin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School For Social Research in New York City. Her research focuses on "what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity" and more recently looks at humanitarianism at various levels. For emergency response her work focuses more on response done for humanitarian aid and displaced peoples.
http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/?id=4d54-6379-4e44-4d35
1. In this sense, gender-based violence makes it clear that the suffering body – while purportedly universal – requires certain political, historical and cultural attributes to render it visible and worthy of care.
2. It seems that humanitarianism, as universalism, both erases and depends on difference; on the one hand, it manages difference, declawing it so that it doesn’t tear apart the humanitarian kit, made to fit and rehabilitate everyone into a basic bare-bones humanity.
3. In this sense, bringing gender-based violence into the humanitarian mission has inadvertently opened up a space for confrontation with politically significant forms of difference and inequality in their real and rabid forms.
The main findings are about gender based violence in armed conflicts and the political implications of addressing gender based violence (separating and giving special treatment versus treating everyone as neutral) in humanitarian aid efforts.
Sexual violence has a place in humanitarianism; when it comes to getting treatment in humanitarian aid efforts gender-based violence is recognized as a "crime against humanity" that needs to be addressed as they are common in armed conflicts.
Gender-based violence is approached as both a medical and health issue; the immediate wounds as the result of gender based violence (usually sexual violence) is focused on for treatment in emergencies but the deeper issue of the "rape epidemic" resulting from the system/ culture is not "treated".