Editing Human shield (section)

==Legal background==
{{Main|Human shield (law)}}
A human shield is a [[non-combatant]] (or a group of non-combatants) who either volunteers or is forced to shield a legitimate military target in order to deter the enemy from attacking it.<ref name="Gordon Perugini">{{cite book |author1=Neve Gordon |author-link1=Neve Gordon |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j3LnDwAAQBAJ |title=Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire |author2=Nicola Perugini |author-link2=Nicola Perugini |publisher=University of California Press |year=2020 |isbn=978-0-520-30184-9 |access-date=2024-10-07}}</ref>  Forcing [[protected persons]] to serve as human shields is a [[war crime]] according to the 1949 [[Geneva Conventions]], the 1977 [[Protocol I|Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions]], and the 1998 [[Rome Statute]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule97 |title=Practice Relating to Rule 97. Human Shields |publisher=[[International Committee of the Red Cross]] |access-date=2015-01-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140804142107/http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule97 |archive-date=2014-08-04 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all}}</ref> The term is also used when combatants place themselves in or conduct military activity from locations with non-combatants nearby, making it difficult for the enemy to attack without endangering the non-combatants.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

According to law professor Eliav Lieblich, "Armed groups might be responsible for harm that they occasion to civilians under their control. But to argue that this absolves the other party from responsibility is to get both law and morality wrong."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.justsecurity.org/76220/dispatch-from-israel-on-human-shields-what-i-shouldve-said-to-a-dad-on-the-playground/|title=Dispatch from Israel on Human Shields: What I Should've Said to a Dad on the Playground|date=May 18, 2021|website=Just Security}}</ref>

Law professor [[Adil Ahmad Haque]] states that involuntary shields "retain their legal and moral protection from intentional, unnecessary, and disproportionate harm." He argues against the position of the United States Department of Defense (as well as the United Kingdom and some scholars) that attackers may discount or disregard collateral harm in determining proportionality and states that these views are "legally baseless and morally unsound".<ref name=Ethiwar>{{cite book|last=Haque |first=Adil Ahmed |title=Law and Morality at War|url=https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687398.001.0001/acprof-9780199687398-chapter-9 |date=2017|publisher=Oxford University Press |chapter = Chapter 9.Human Shields|isbn= 978-0-19-968739-8}}</ref>

Authors [[Neve Gordon]] and Nicola Perugini, elaborating on their book, ''Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire'', discuss "proximate shields", humans as shields merely due to proximity to belligerents and assert that this type has become "by far the most prominent type of shield in contemporary discourse". They say that the proximate shielding accusation has been used by States to cover-up [[List of war crimes|war crimes]] against civilian populations and that human rights organizations frequently fail to question this charge which they claim is being improperly used to justify civilian deaths.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2021/11/18/proximate-human-shields/|title=Proximate 'human shields' and the challenge for humanitarian organizations|date=November 18, 2021|website=Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog}}</ref>