The arguments made in this article are largely supported by analisys of facts and statistical data provided by international humanitarian organizations such as the MSF and the World Health Organization.
This discusses the rape and gender based violance in the context of humanitarian response. It looks at how rape and gender based violance is seen by the humanitarian communty and the complexities of determining how it should be treated, if at all. The article discusses the factors leading to gender based violance and the different approaches that the humanitarian community could pursue it with, finding the pros and cons of each, citing the need to maintain neutrality, be apolitical, and be equal in care, treatment, and aid for all groups affected.
According to Google Scholar, this article has been cited 22 times in various works, with topics mainly focusing on the effects of humanitarian aid and social welfare on groups that are considered to be in the gender based minority, including women and the LBGTQ community.
Based on this article's bibliography, it appears that a large ammount of information from this article was drawn from MSF reports and essays, United Nations reports, and previous scholarly research done in the fields of humanitarianism, feminism, and the social aspects of medicine.
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.
This article was written by Miriam Ticktin, and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility at the New School. She received her PhD in Anthropology at Stanford University and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and an MA in English Literature from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Before coming to the New School, she was an Assistant Professor in Women’s Studies and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, and also held a postdoctoral position in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. Her research primarily focusses on the intersections of the anthropology of medicine and science, law, and transnational and postcolonial feminist theory.
They confess that ‘survivors of sexual violence have generally been neglected in standard models of humanitarian aid delivery’.
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.
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.
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".
Emergency response in the context of "boots on the ground" aid is not directly discussed in this article, however the greater complexities of humanitarian aid, which often do include medical emerency response, is the primary focus of this article. This article focuses more on humanitarian efforts and gender based violence which can be important when considering the methods and social reprecussions of giving emergency aid.
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