Abstract
In recent decades, we have witnessed the emergence of new forms of warfare, which are characterized by asymmetry, irregularity and the cybernetization of weaponry. Waged from a distance, these wars have created the impression of decorporealization and low risk, at least for one of the contending parties. In contrast, the same asymmetric conflicts have been sites in which the human body has been utilized as a novel and lethal weapon. Although much scholarly attention has been paid to suicide attackers who have become symbolic (if dystopic) figures of this new warfare, this article draws attention to their inverse figure: human shields. The human shield risks life not to destroy and terrorize others but to resist organized violence and protect others. This article explores the figure of the human shield, situating it within the context of global moral spectatorship, international humanitarian law and biopolitical warfare. Arguing that the human shield is both a symptom and the immanent critique of the present, one that exposes its multiple contradictions, this article makes a case for the importance of the figure of the human shield for contemporary politics.
References
Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated from Italian by D. Heller-Roazen Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Al-Duaij, N. (2010) The volunteer human shields in international humanitarian law. Oregon Review of International Law 12 (1): 117–139.
Anghie, A. (2004) Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Beier, J.M. (2003) Discriminating tastes: ‘Smart’ bombs, non-combatants, and notions of legitimacy in warfare. Security Dialogue 34 (4): 411–425.
Benjamin, W. (1940[1968]) Theses on the philosophy of history. In: H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, pp. 253–64.
Benjamin, W. (1921[2004]) Critique of Violence. In: M. Bullock and M.W. Jennings (eds.), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 1913–1926 Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 236–252.
Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (1991) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Butler, J. (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London and New York: Verso.
Chandler, D. (2004) The responsibility to protect? Imposing the ‘Liberal Peace’. International Peacekeeping 11 (1): 59–81.
Connolly, W. (2004) The complexities of sovereignty. In: J. Edkins, V. Pin-Fat and M. Shapiro (eds.), Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics. New York: Routledge, pp. 23–40.
Convention (III) Relative to the treatment of prisoners of war. (1949) Geneva, 12 August, http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/375?OpenDocument, accessed 19 January 2012.
Convention (IV) Relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war. (1949) Geneva, 12 August, http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/380?OpenDocument, accessed 19 January 2012.
Convention (IV) Respecting the laws and customs of war on land. (1907) The Hague. 18 October, http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/200?OpenDocument, accessed 20 January 2011.
De Belle, S.B. (2008) Chained to cannons or wearing targets on their T-shirts: Human shields in international humanitarian law. International Review of the Red Cross 90 (872): 883–906.
De Larrinaga, M. and Doucet, M.G. (2008) Sovereign power and the biopolitics of human security. Security Dialogue 39 (5): 517–537.
Derrida, J. (2003) Autoimmunity: Real and symbolic suicides. In: G. Borradori (ed.), Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 85–136.
Dicle, D. (2011) Adanmış Bedenler, Canlı Kalkanlar. AmedNews: Kurdish Social Media Agency. [online] August 14, http://www.ajansamed.com/2011/08/14/adanmis-bedenler-canli-kalkanlar/, accessed 11 June 2012.
Dillon, M. (2004) Correlating sovereign and biopower. In: J. Edkins, V. Pin-Fat and M. Shapiro (eds.), Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics. New York: Routledge, pp. 41–60.
Dillon, M. and Reid, J. (2009) The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live. New York: Routledge.
Dinstein, Y. (2004) The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Douzinas, C. (2003) Humanity, military humanism and the new moral order. Economy and Society 32 (2): 159–183.
Dunlap, C.J. (1997/1998) A virtuous warrior in a savage world. United States Air Force Academy Journal of Legal Studies, 8, [online], http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usafa/virtuous_warrior.pdf, accessed 22 February 2012.
Ezzo, M.V. and Guiora, A.N. (2009) A critical decision point on the battlefield – Friend, foe, or innocent bystander. In: C. Baillet (ed.), Security: A Multidisciplinary Normative Approach. Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 91–115.
Fassin, D. (2012) Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Translated from French by R. Gomme Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Foucalt, M. (1978) History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Translated from French by R. Hurley, New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (2010) The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France 1982-1983. Translated from French by G. Burchell, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fusco, P. (2011) Legal status of human shields. Centro Studi per la Pace. [online], http://www.studiperlapace.it, accessed 19 December 2011.
Gilroy, P. (2005) Postcolonial Melancholies. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gregory, D. (2006) Baring life: Cities, military violence, and the politics of representation. In: P. Misselwitz and T. Rieniets (eds.), City of Collision: Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism. Basel,Switzerland: Birkhauser, pp. 212–221.
Grosscup, B. (2006) Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment. London and New York: Zed Books.
Haas, J. (2005) Voluntary human shields: Status and protection under international humanitarian law. In: R. Arnold and P.A. Hildbrand (eds.), International Humanitarian Law and the 21st Century’s Conflicts: Changes and Challenges. Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Interuniversitaires Suisses – Edis, pp. 191–213.
Henckaerts, J.M. and Doswald-Beck, L. (2005) Customary International Humanitarian Law, Vol. I, Rules, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Human Rights Watch. (2003) International humanitarian law issues in a potential war in Iraq. [Briefing Paper], 20 February, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/02/20/international-humanitarian-law-issues-potential-war-iraq, accessed 20 December 2011.
Human Shield Action to Iraq. (2003) Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action to Iraq. [online], http://www.humanshields.org/, accessed 18 December 2011.
ICISS [International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty]. (2001) The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background. Ottawa: International Development Research Center.
Jabri, V. (2010) War and the Transformation of Global Politics, 2nd edn. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
JPS [Journal of Palestine Studies]. (2003) In perspective: The death of American peace activist Rachel Corrie. Journal of Palestine Studies 32 (4): 68–73.
Kaldor, M. (2006) New and Old Wars, 2nd edn. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Kant, I. (1798[1991]) Contest of the faculties. In: H.S. Reiss (ed.), Political Writings, 2nd edn. Translated from German by H.B. Nisbett. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kinsella, H.M. (2006) Gendering grotius: Sex and sex difference in the laws of war. Political Theory 34 (2): 161–191.
Lemke, T. (2011) Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. Translated by Eric Frederick Trump, New York and London: New York University Press.
Lindqvist, S. (2000) A History of Bombing. Translated from Swedish by L. Haverty Rugg, London: Granta Books.
Lomonaco, J. (2005) Kant’s unselfish partisans as democratic citizens. Public Culture 17 (3): 393–416.
Lyall, R. (2008) Voluntary human shields, direct participation in hostilities and the international humanitarian law obligations of states. Melbourne Journal of International Law 9 (2): 313–333.
Mahony, L. and Eguren, L.E. (1997) Unarmed Bodyguards: International Accompaniment for the Protection of Human Rights. Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
Mahrouse, G. (2009) Transnational activists, news media representations, and racialized ‘Politics of Life’: The christian peacemaker team kidnapping in Iraq. Citizenship Studies 13 (4): 311–331.
Mahrouse, G. (forthcoming) Conflicted Commitments: Race, Privilege and Power in Solidarity Activism. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Mbembe, A. (2003) Necropolitics. Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40.
Münkler, H. (2005) The New Wars. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.
O’Keefe, K.N. (2003) Human Shield Mission to Iraq. [press release], 9 January, http://www.ccmep.org/2002_articles/Iraq/122102_human_shield_mission_to_iraq.htm, accessed 16 January 2012.
Orford, A. (2011) International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), (1977) Geneva, 8 June, http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/475?OpenDocument, accessed 19 January 2012.
Quéguiner, J.F. (2006) Precautions under the law governing the conduct of hostilities. International Review of the Red Cross 88 (864): 793–821.
Reid, J. (2006) The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: Life Struggles, Liberal Modernity, and the Defence of Logistical Societies. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Rose, N. (2007) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Rosen, R.D. (2009) Targeting enemy forces in the war on terror: Preserving civilian immunity. Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 42 (3): 683–777.
Rubinstein, A. and Roznai, Y. (2011) Human shields in modern armed conflicts: The need for a proportionate proportionality. Stanford Law & Policy Review 22 (1): 93–128.
Said, E.W. (2004) The meaning of Rachel Corrie: Of dignity and solidarity. In: J. Sandercock et al. (eds.), Peace Under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement. London and New York: Verso, pp. xi–xxii.
Sciarrino, A.J. and Deutsch, K.L. (2003) Conscientious objection to war: Heroes to human shields. BYU Journal of Public Law 18 (1): 59–106.
Schmitt, C. (2007) The Concept of the Political. Translated from German by G. Schwab, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Schmitt, M.N. (2009) Human shields in international humanitarian law. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 47 (2): 292–338.
Schoenekase, D.P. (2004) Targeting decisions regarding human shields. Military Review 84 (5): 26–31.
Simanowitz, S. (2003) The Human Shield Movement, Z Magazine Online [online], http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2003/simanowitzpr1103.html, accessed 18 December 2011.
Skerker, M. (2004) Just war criteria and the new face of war: Human shields, manufactured Martyrs, and Little Boys with stones. Journal of Military Ethics 3 (1): 27–39.
Van Engeland, A. (2011) Civilian or Combatant? A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weber, C. (2006) Visions of Solidarity: US Peace Activists in Nicaragua from War to Women’s Activism and Globalization. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Weber, S. (2005) Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarization of Thinking. New York: Fordham University Press.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Wendy Brown, Ina Kerner, Regina Kreide, Carsten Laustsen, Massimiliano Tomba and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. I thank Peter Galambos for research assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bargu, B. Human shields. Contemp Polit Theory 12, 277–295 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2013.1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2013.1