"HUMAN SHIELDS : A History of People in the Line of Fire" a book by Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini.
Channel: Frank Barat
Date: 01/10/2020

In their recently published book ‘Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire’, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini describe the use of human shields in key historical and contemporary moments across the globe. Recounting incidents of human shielding over a span of 150 years while looking at how the laws of armed conflict have dealt with the phenomenon, Neve and Nicola explain when, why, and how certain people have become human weapons, and how certain manifestations of violence come to be conceived as humane while others are perceived as immoral. This is timely and most relevant for current work on how to address the rising challenge of human shields.

Nicola Perugini teaches in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses mainly on international law, human rights, and violence. He is the author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press 2015) and Human Shields. A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press 2020) and has published articles on war and the ethics of violence; the politics of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law; humanitarianism's visual cultures; war and embedded anthropology; refugees and asylum seekers; and trauma in Israel/Palestine. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (2012/2013), a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University (2014-2016), and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2017-2019). He has served as consultant for UNESCO and UN Women and his opinion pieces have appeared in Al Jazeera English, LRB Blog, Newseek, Internazionale, The Nation, the Huffington Post, the Conversation, Open Democracy, the Herald. He can be followed on https://twitter.com/PeruginiNic

Neve Gordon teaches international law at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on international humanitarian law, human rights, new warfare technologies, the ethics of violence, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gordon's first book, Israel’s Occupation (2008), provided a structural history of Israel’s mechanisms of control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. His second book, The Human Right to Dominate (2015) was written with Nicola Perugini and examines how human rights, which are generally conceived as tools for advancing emancipation, can also be used to enhance subjugation and dispossession. Most recently, he wrote with Perugini the first book on the legal and political history of human shielding. Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press 2020) follows the marginal and controversial figure of the human shield over a period of 150 years in order to interrogate the laws of war and how the ethics of humane violence is produced.

Buy the book : https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520301849/human-shields

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