The Geneva Conventions are a series of international treaties designed to lessen some of the horrors of warfare. They were first adopted over a century ago and expanded over the years. The conventions prohibit torture, the taking of hostages, mass deportations, summary executions, and other atrocities. The conventions state prisoners “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion, or faith, sex, birth or wealth.” More than 190 nations, including the U.S. have signed on to follow the conventions.
The Geneva Conventions were created in 1859 by a Swiss businessman named Henri Dunant who, while seeking an audience with Napoleon II, witnessed horrible atrocities on the Battlefield of Solferino. On the Battlefied of Solferino, the Italian state of Piedmont was fighting the Austrians for independence. On a day where 40,000 men were killed or wounded, Dunant witnessed injured soldiers who were abandoned and left for dead in vast, stinking cesspools of vermin-infested filth and rotting bodies.
Dunant resolved to stop such misery from ever happening again and upon returning home, mobilized government officials, lawyers, and industrialists to convene a “Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.”
The resulting treaty, signed in Geneva in 1864 by 12 nations, was the first to ever declare that injured or sick combatants must be cared for. For his efforts, Dunant shared in the first Nobel Peace Prize, in 1901.
The Second Geneva Convention, which was held in 1906, extended compassionate treatment to combatants at sea, not just those on the field.
The Third Geneva Convention, which was held in 1929, required that belligerents treat prisoners of war respectfully, supply information about their status to their nations of origin, and permit visits from representatives of neutral states.
Following the horrors of World War II, the Fourth Geneva Convention was convened in 1949 and it was declared that POWs must receive adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment; have access to mail; and be allowed to worship as they please.
The treaty also specifies that prisoners cannot be used as human shields, forced into dangerous work, or subjected to medical experimentation. The signatory nations thought that in 1949, they had everything covered, but what was to come in the years of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the conflicts of the Middle East, was new type of warfare where combatants didn’t always wear uniforms and march under the flag of a sovereign nation, recognized by other nations of the world.
In 1977, the so-called Fifth Geneva Convention, amendments governing “wars of self-determination” and civil wars were added. Under these protocols, combatants are “obliged to distinguish themselves” from civilians and carry weapons openly. A captured fighter who fails to do so is not considered a POW under the treaty. In a contradiction, however, a combatant that does not identify him or herself as a combatants is still supposed to receive “protections equivalent in all respects” to those given to POWs.
The 1977 amendments also state that a combatant can be deemed a POW of fighting “against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes.”
So, why is the 1977 convention called the “so-called Fifth Geneva Convention? It is because only 160 nations, not the full 190 nations ratified the 1977 protocols.
Here in the U.S, we have only signed on the first four conventions and never agreed to follow the amendments of 1977. It is the current policy of the United States, and always has been the policy of the United States, to not classify combatants that are not in uniform, do not carry their weapons openly, or attack civilian targets, as POWs.
Though the current Bush White House seems to get the credit for making this policy, it was, in fact, solidified way back in 1977 under the Carter White House, when the U.S. did not ratify the so-called Fifth Geneva Convention. It is this policy under which captured terrorist are currently being classified as “unlawful combatants” as opposed to “POWs.”
