This project examines the history and contemporary politics of human shielding, a growing phenomenon related to the increasing “weaponization” of human bodies in contemporary warfare. In international humanitarian law (IHL) and military literature human shielding generally refers to the deployment of civilians to deter attacks on combatants or military sites as well as to their transformation into a technology of warfare. The current significance of human shielding both as a military instrument and as a legal category cannot be overstated given that urban settings have become decisive arenas of many contemporary conflicts. From the Sri Lankan civil war and the Israeli siege on Gaza through the multiple chapters of the War on Terror to the protests in Standing Rock North Dakota, accusations concerning the use of human shields as a means of protection, coercion or deterrence have multiplied over the last decade. Indeed, the dramatic increase of urban warfare, including insurgency and counterinsurgency, terrorism and counterterrorism, inevitably entails that civilians are caught in the front lines of the fighting, while the distinction between civilians and combatants is constantly blurred.
This, in turn, spurs a series of moral dilemmas of urgent social and political relevance relating to the deployment of violence. On Human Shielding tackles an urgent and proliferating phenomenon related to contemporary conflicts, and develop—new knowledge on violence and IHL. To accomplish this goal, OHS investigates how the category human shield is progressively transforming our conception of what a civilian is in war and our understanding of contemporary conflicts.
The project has two overall objectives. The first is to outline the development of the human shield category in IHL, tracing the historical events—with particular focus on European wars both on the continent and in the colonies—and the legal debates leading to the consolidation of this concept within the legal sphere. The second objective is to identify and theorize the various forms of human shielding in order to improve our understanding of the diverse situations in which human shields appear in contemporary conflict zones and the way they shape our understanding of war.
The project produced the first ever reconstruction of the history of human shields. Over the last 150 years, human shields have acquired multiple political and ethical meanings. They have emerged as a key figure of international law, one that is increasingly marshalled to legitimize the use of lethal violence trapped in war zones. Simultaneously, human shields have appeared in unexpected sites such as anti-nuclear struggles, civil and environmental protests, exposing how forms of violence used by militaries in foreign conquests are migrating into the civil sphere. Ultimately, the history of human shielding is a history of how the human body has been weaponized to advance domination as well as resistance, and serves as an effective prism for interrogating the ethics of violence.
