Italy
Practice Relating to Rule 97. Human Shields
Italy’s IHL Manual (1991) provides: “It is prohibited to use civilian persons to shelter, owing to their presence, a place, a military objective or a zone of military operations.”
In January 1991, in a letter to the President of the UN Security Council, Italy warned Iraq in the strongest terms against carrying out its alleged intention to move prisoners of war to strategic sites, and recalled Article 23 of the 1949 Geneva Convention III.