Blog Post 6

Miriam Ticktin’s Where ethics and politics meet: the violence of humanitarianism in France dives deep into the very heavy concepts of humanitarianism and human rights in a political landscape. Ticktin differentiates humanitarianism and human rights in a very helpful way, she states, “Although both human rights and humanitarianism are complexly constituted transnational institutions, practices, and discursive regimes, in a broad sense, human-rights institutions are largely grounded in law, constructed to further legal claims, responsibility, and accountability, whereas humanitarianism is more about the ethical and moral imperative to bring relief to those suffering and to save lives; here, the appeal to law remains opportunistic” (Ticktin 35). Given that humanitarianism is root in ethics rather than law it is easier to understand the passive nature of many countries when dealing with ethical issues. Ticktin’s point about the religious roots of humanitarianism further drives home the non-political nature of this concept (36). These are connection I never made prior to this reading; Ticktin’s clarifications really help answer a lot of the question we have been asking this semester about political intervention and reasons for the lack of it. I think Ticktin actually offers a solution, that others have yet to mention in which progress is not about returning to a regime of rights but exploring what can be achieved within and between laws. Society will never eliminate the system of citizenship, immigrants and illegality. But, as much as we like to think of laws as a very structured system, we must not forget that democracy is a system of fluidity in which change is the core of the institution. How can we achieve change within the structure that currently exists? First, I think we need to acknowledge that society has created a category called citizen and this automatically creates a hierarchy in which being simply human is not enough.