Enabling state violence in times of genocide: the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Commentary on human shields

Abstract In 2025, the International Committee of the Red Cross published an updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, presenting it as a tool that can strengthen civilian protection in contemporary warfare. Focusing on the new interpretation of Article 28 prohibiting the use of human shields, we argue that the new Commentary in effect broadens the legal justifications for killing civilians and destroying civilian objects. The ICRC’s new interpretation is especially troubling as it coincides with Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has incessantly invoked the provision on human shields to cover its violations of IHL and the Genocide Convention. If the entire battlefield can be cast as an illegal human shielding space to justify atrocity crimes, then the rules-based order created in the aftermath of World War II to regulate war according to humanitarian principles becomes a tool for its own undoing.