I always hear about it but I genuinely do not know what it is. I tried looking it up but I still don’t understand..
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It’s a bunch of rules for armed conflict that a bunch (but not all) countries agreed to a while ago. It determines what is and isn’t “permissible” in war with reference to non-combatants: who is and isn’t a combatant, and what is considered acceptable treatment for captured or wounded enemy personnel and civilians. Technically there are actually several Geneva conventions, but most people just use the phrase as a singular.
The idea is that we want to allow soldiers to surrender, and we don’t want it to be okay to kill civilians beyond what is absolutely necessary. If countries agree to these, it will make the hell that is war slightly less hellish (still bad though).
They aren’t directly enforced in wartime or anything – there’s no Geneva cops that will pull you over and give you a ticket for not following them because nobody really has that power over a country. That said, a country not following them is a good way to turn international opinion against it, which will cause problems after the war, or during the war if it goes on long enough.
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