On The Issue Of International Humanitarian Law In The Perspective Of Human Shields

The protection of civilians is one of the main goals of international humanitarian law. Although human shield has been widely used in modern battle, there is no international convention to handle and control the issue. Is the tactics of human shield absolutely banned? In the case that one party of forced conflict uses the strategy and fails to exercise the duty of remove civilians to military objective, does the other party have the right to attack human shield? Is human shield a civilian or a soldier? When being captured, does human shield have the legal status as P.O.W. (prisoner of war)? Is voluntarily to be human shield war crime? If so, what is the legal warranty to convict the behavior to be human shield is guilty, a domestic law or international law? Guan Zhong, Chinese ancient philosopher, believed law and regulation of state were the rule of the behavior of citizens, which illustrates the significant role of law to coordinate and regulate the activity of human beings. Operation of war or relevant with war has serious influence to people's life, indeed should be ruled by law. On the basis of international law theory, the article aims to analyze the issues related with human shield and try to establish balance between the protections of civilian and maintain military interests. The final goal of the article is to realize the control the activity of war with law.Human shield shall be classified to volunteer human shield and non-volunteer human shield, which is the basis for further analysis. In the face of human shield tactics, either defense or attack party shall confine their military activity in battle, e.g. the strategy of utilization of civilian to cover military objective or operation is absolutely banned on the one hand. On the other hand, attack party shall not target human shield directly regardless of the principle of distinction and proportion.The conception of direct participant hostilities provides a appropriate standard to analyze the legal status of human shield. In the event a civilian does not directly participate hostilities shall not be regarded as soldier and enjoy the protection under the background of force conflict. On the contrary, if human shield is satisfied the condition of direct participant hostilities, he will lose the protection provided by international humanitarian law. The definition of the status of human shield will also affect the utilization of the principle of distinction and proportion which means attack to military objective shall choose the way resulting in minimum civilian casualties. Mencius, an Chinese ancient scholar views the high morality of ruler and law itself are not equivalent to excellent policy and perfect order reigned throughout the entire country, which refers to the significant importance of converting of law from article to practice. In the case the parties in forced conflict fail to perform their duties in accordance with international humanitarian law, they will undertake the corresponding responsibility.