In 1859, a human rights activist named Henry Dunant — who would later co-found the Red Cross — observed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, between the French-Piedmontese and Austrian armies in Northern Italy. He was shocked by the treatment of wounded soldiers on the battlefield; he worked diligently to bring together a variety of governments to sign onto a series of rules governing the treatment of captured and wounded soldiers, signed in Geneva in 1864. These would become known as the First Geneva Conventions.
It took another 85 years, however, before the world began to think about the treatment of civilians in wartime. In horror at the German treatment of civilians during World War II, the Geneva Conventions were expanded in 1949 to protect non-combatant civilians. This was accomplished in the Fourth Geneva Convention, designed to protect civilians by encouraging military actors to separate themselves from civilians. The 1977 additional protocols made clear that the use of human shields was absolutely forbidden by the rules of war:
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