[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/...