Comment by gpm
16 hours ago
No it's not. International law is generally exceptionally clear that one war crime doesn't justify another, and using civilians as human shields is about as core a war-crime as war-crimes get.
16 hours ago
No it's not. International law is generally exceptionally clear that one war crime doesn't justify another, and using civilians as human shields is about as core a war-crime as war-crimes get.
I tried to look it up: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule97#ti...
> The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations.[18] Most examples given in military manuals, or which have been the object of condemnations, have been cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks. The military manuals of New Zealand and the United Kingdom give as examples the placing of persons in or next to ammunition trains.
The situation in Iran is not this. The suggestion was that humans might volunteer to go to non-military sites.
As an extreme hypothetical, are humans living in their homes acting as human shields for those homes? How about people at school? How about people parading on a bridge? Does it become different if someone threatens to blow up a bridge and people parade there in response?
Eh, the quoted text, and also the literal text of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 28 [1], doesn't qualify "certain points or areas" as only "military sites". While the other side should only be attacking military sites I don't see how that could possibly justify protecting non-military sites with human shields.
> As an extreme hypothetical, are humans living in their homes acting as human shields for those homes? How about people at school? How about people parading on a bridge?
Generally speaking I read this as not, because they aren't being "used to" render those points immune from attack, they just happen to be doing so. Hypothetically if you were to rush civilians back to their homes in an evacuated town to protect it from an attack - or as you suggest organize parades on bridges that are threatened - that would seem to meet the "used to" requirement.
(Good discussion though)
[1] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/art...
> Article 28 - Prohibition of using human shields
> The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.
Article 54 gives some sites that may not be attacked. Maybe a protected person cannot render at least those sites “immune” since they are already immune.