Professor Neve Gordon has co-written for Al Jazeera on the current customary legal consensus whereby the human shields provisions can be used to justify the killing of civilians.
He writes: "In order to contest the legal arguments that Russia invokes to justify the slaying of innocents, investigative agencies, humanitarian organisations, and human rights groups first need to confront the ease with which warring parties cast hundreds of thousands and at times even millions of civilians as human shields."
Read the full article in Al Jazeera.
Neve Gordon is Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Queen Mary University of London.