“A wide-ranging, accessible book that focuses on the ethical and legal dilemmas connected with a practice that blurs the distinction between combatants and noncombatants. . . . An invaluable tool for courses on conflict and human rights, especially because it provides relevant evidence and arguments, without offering an easy resolution to the dilemmas posed.”—CHOICE
"The human shield faces us; we are its audience. The key contribution of this timely book is to elucidate that speech acts about human shielding authorize some forms of action and enable particular constellations of actors while delegitimizing and disabling others."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
"Through analysing the contradictions, evolutions, and the legal ambiguity surrounding human shields, they contend convincingly that ‘humanity’ is not a politically neutral category."—Political Studies Review
"Fascinating . . . . Although Human Shields is rich with historical texture, it does more than simply document instances where these shields have been deployed. The book makes an important contribution to debates about how international humanitarian law works to enable the violence inflicted on the battlefield by legitimizing the harm caused to civilians. . . . Like most great books, Human Shields provokes more questions than it resolves."—Perspectives on Politics
"Outstanding and thought-provoking. . . . Exposes, at times hauntingly, the frailty of the human condition and the precarity of life."—H-Diplo
"Contributes to public education from the evolving, global experience with human shields, which now include civilian movements to protest government actions."—Quaker Universalist Voice
“A compelling, thoughtful, and ambitious book, which successfully takes a novel – if troubling– micro-issue of conflict and explores it through a macro multi-disciplinary lens."
—Peace & Change
"Excellent analysis of shielding in international humanitarian law. . . . While by far the best analysis of the subject so far, their book should inspire other scholars to think even more deeply about the humanization of human shielding at a time of global fracture."
—International Politics Reviews
“Human Shields provides a critical new addition to the literature on international law. The book demonstrates the ways in which powerful states have continued to utilize IHL as a tool for aggression against marginalized communities”—Journal of Palestine Studies
"Whilst the breadth and depth of Human Shields are astonishingly exhaustive, another virtue of the book is its timing. . . . The authors’ compelling narrative and absorbing study may not draw glib and comforting conclusions, but it does offer a thoroughly researched answer to some of today’s persistent questions regarding the past, present and future conduct of war, the ethics of humane violence and the legal status of civilians in war zones."—LSE Review of Books
"Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini have written a terrifying book about how international law enables war’s violence despite the fact it purports to do the opposite."—New Mexico Historical Review
"In this amazing book, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini excavate the forms of human shielding, including as a pacifist tactic, in a diverse range of locales around the world and over a century and a half. With its insights into the politics of who counts as human,
Human Shields is one of the most important interventions ever in the critical history of the laws of war."—Samuel Moyn, author of
Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World "Compellingly important and thoroughly absorbing, this very readable book will fast become the standard reference in our understanding of human shields."—Laleh Khalili, author of
Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula
