[darkwater]

I don't fully understand why a convention that allegedly tries to protect human rights makes a so bold difference just based on job positions (aka ranks). I mean, I do understand where it comes from, and especially when it applies to prisoners of war, so military forces. They basically can only think in hierarchies so designing a system that works with hierarchies will have more chances to be actually followed. But still, I find it weird.

[avar]

Because it was written and enacted primarily by recently warring western nation states, not a group of detached philosophical monks living on a mountaintop.

The elites in those societies had a clear interest in carving out special privileges for themselves, which is why officers receive preferential treatment.

The 1929 Geneva convention has other things you may find objectionable, such as Section II, article 9 (paragraph 3)[1]:

    Belligerents shall, so far as
    possible, avoid assembling in
    a single camp prisoners of
    different races or nationalities.

Which is there for obvious reasons. Can you imagine the horror of being housed in a racially unhomogenous camp? People in 1929 sure could.

1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva02.asp#art9

[mschuster91]

> Can you imagine the horror of being housed in a racially unhomogenous camp? People in 1929 sure could.

That's still the case today. Here in Germany, after 2015 there were often issues in temporary housing (e.g. sports halls converted to improptu shelters) when refugees from different backgrounds collided. Say you had two ethnic groups fighting a civil war, and members of both would flee to Germany, and continue their conflict here. Or religion - shiite and sunni muslims each view the other groups as infidels.

Or go back two decades prior, to the aftermaths of the Yugoslavian wars and their refugees that mostly came to Germany (due to a strong diaspora tradition), with the only thing anybody would have agreed upon is that beating a Serb takes precedence over any other internal fight. Balkan ethnic conflicts can even be confusing for people living there, it's madness - but thankfully it has (mostly - excluding BiH/Kosovo...) died down by now.

That Geneva Convention rule makes sense in the end, it aims to prevent conflict from stirring up in camps.

[avar]

What you're saying here isn't relevant.

The 1929 Geneva convention is talking about the segregation of POW's who before capture would have been part of the same organized armed forces.

The only reason to specify that POW camps should be divided by nationality and race is to e.g. ensure that black French colonial troops aren't going to be using the same proverbial bathrooms as white continental French troops.

In the 1949 version of the Geneva convention this clause was eliminated, and replaced by wording which presupposes racially integrated armed forces, or alternatively makes it deliberately ambiguous as part of "customs". From Article 22[1].

    The Detaining Power shall assemble
    prisoners of war in camps or camp
    compounds according to their
    nationality, language and customs. 
    [...], except with their consent.

1. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

[HeyLaughingBoy]

It's a film, but still, one of the things I found interesting in "Grande Illusion" was how the German PoW camp commandant and the British officer got along so well. The strength of their relationship based almost entirely on them both being former aristocrats.

[smabie]

I mean we still do this for prisons because you get massive issues if you don't

[solidsnack9000]

I'm not sure I understand the connection you're drawing with human rights.

Officers and men live separately -- have separate dining halls, quarters, clubs, &c -- to some degree even when they're not in camps. This is generally seen to contribute to the ability of officers to maintain order among the enlisted. The separation helps officers to remain coordinated with each other as well as allowing things to be somewhat less personal between officers and enlisted. It may not sound nice to us, outside the military; but it's not something the people writing the convention came up with and it's not something they had it in their power to do anything about. They were trying to bring some order to the treatment of prisoners of war, not reorganize the militaries of the world on egalitarian lines.

So it's not so much about people on the side of the detaining power who "...can only think in hierarchies..." as it is about the social system that prisoners are a part of immediately before they are captured, and respect for that social system, as offering both continuity and a semblance of order for prisoners. A commentary maintained by the ICRC puts it this way:

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciii-1949/ar...

...leaving the hierarchy of the battlefield intact in prisoner-of-war camps serves the interests of both the Detaining Power and the Power on which the prisoners depend. Retaining a functioning command structure among prisoners of war of one Party will usually have a positive effect on camp order and discipline, which can be an important factor in ensuring the best possible conditions of internment for all prisoners of war. Differential treatment involving privileges for higher-ranking prisoners is one way of maintaining this structure.

[darkwater]

The social system in the military is based on strong hierarchies. They keep playing the same game even in prisoner's camps.

[jajko]

Think about it a bit, its actually practical. Who is more probable to instill a mutiny or escape, a foot soldier with basic education who is whole life just being told what to do and think, or a westpoint captain / russian officer with kgb training?

Also, you want valuable information from officers, so you treat them better and wear them down with soft power (often used in Vietnam, I've read whole book how they gradually befriended some officers treating them nicely, and then one day an officer reads how US is evil into the camera).

Also, you project how you want the other side to treat your higher ranks, there is often quid pro quo mentality.

I can go on and on. To think that people 100 years ago creating Geneva charter were clueless idiots and warfare changed dramatically is... unwise, this worked for millennia and I see no change.

[brandall10]

Don't quite follow why the Geneva convention would written to seemingly confer advantages to the captor.

The quid pro quo part makes sense, to some extent allowing the ranking to carry forward behind enemy lines out of respect and to ease post-war tensions as higher ups can segue into positions of political power.

[jdietrich]

To give a charitable interpretation: by requiring the rank of PoWs to be respected, the Conventions helped to maintain social cohesion within camps. The privileges of rank are explicitly safeguarded, but those at the time would have implicitly understood that privileges are inseparable from duties. In many cases, the survival of PoWs hinged on the fact that they retained a strong sense of military discipline and order despite their circumstances.

[rsynnott]

Because it's from 1929. The past is a foreign country, and all that. Beyond the 'militaries like hierarchy' angle, there was a huge _class_ aspect there.