[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