NPR did a really good story on this on Friday. Here's the link:
http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/run...ruary/28/2003. It's under "'Human Shields' Position Themselves in Iraq".
They interviewed an American human shield volunteer, then they interviewed someone who was taken hostage and forced to be a human shield.
Personally, I'm a bleeding-heart peacenik, and even I think that the voluntary human shields have been very, VERY naive.