Geneva Conventions
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Geneva Conventions trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Geneva Conventions are the best-known rules of war. They do not try to stop wars from being fought. They set out how the people caught up in them must be treated: wounded soldiers, shipwrecked sailors, prisoners and civilians. The first treaty was signed in 1864, and the versions in force today date from 1949. This quiz covers the key things that happened during the making of the conventions and the key things that resulted from them. It asks about the people and events behind the first treaty, the rules on capture, questioning, camp life and escape, the protections for medics and for civilians under occupation, the emblems that mark protected people and places, and the later protocols and court cases. It suits history and civics students, teachers who want a ready-made classroom round, and anyone who has heard a film character claim rights under the Geneva Convention and wondered what the treaties really say. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Geneva Conventions say their red cross emblem was formed by reversing the colors of which country's flag?
Switzerland
Switzerland's flag is a white cross on red, and the treaty calls the reversed design a compliment to that country. The same text bars businesses from imitating either the emblem or the national arms.
Q 02Besides a birth date, which details must a captured soldier give if questioned under the Third Geneva Convention?
Name, rank and serial number
Name, rank and serial number are all a prisoner has to reveal, and the treaty bans torture or any other coercion to get more. A captive who refuses to say more may not even be threatened or insulted.
Q 03Which product does the Third Geneva Convention say prisoners of war must be permitted to use and buy in camp canteens?
Tobacco
Tobacco gets a sentence of its own in the treaty, which says its use shall be permitted. Canteens must also stock soap and food, and any profits have to be spent for the prisoners' benefit.
Q 04The four Geneva Conventions in force today were drawn up in response to the horrors of which war?
World War II
World War II and the war-crimes trials that followed it pushed diplomats to rewrite the older treaties in 1949. Three of the four conventions revised earlier texts; the fourth was the first devoted to protecting civilians.
Q 05Which emblem did the Ottoman Empire start using in the 1870s in place of the Geneva Convention's red cross?
Red Crescent
The Red Crescent appeared during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, when the Ottoman government feared a cross would alienate its Muslim soldiers. The treaties formally recognized it in 1929.
Q 06Which battlefield nurse founded the American Red Cross and pressed three presidents to ratify the Geneva Convention?
Clara Barton
Clara Barton first met the Red Cross on a trip to Europe in 1869 and spent years campaigning at home. Washington finally joined the treaty in 1882, the year after she founded her society.
Q 07Which 1859 battle, whose untended wounded shocked a traveling businessman, inspired the first Geneva Convention?
Solferino
Solferino ended with tens of thousands of wounded, dying and dead lying on the field with little care. The businessman persuaded local villagers to nurse men from both armies, then wrote a book urging a treaty.
Q 08Which vessels must be painted white all over under the Second Geneva Convention, which bans attacking or capturing them?
Hospital ships
Hospital ships must also show dark red crosses, as large as possible, on the hull and upper surfaces. In return for that protection they may not send coded radio messages.
Q 09Under the Third Geneva Convention, enlisted prisoners of war must still do what on meeting their captors' officers?
Salute them
Enlisted prisoners must salute them, showing enemy officers the same respect their own army's rules demand. Captured officers need only salute their seniors and the camp commander.
Q 10Which weapon was outlawed by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, a treaty separate from the Geneva Conventions?
Poison gas
Poison gas and germ warfare fall under the 1925 protocol, while the conventions themselves protect people rather than regulate weapons. The protocol bans only their use and says nothing about making or storing them.
Q 11Which businessman from Geneva shared the first Nobel Peace Prize for inspiring the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions?
Henry Dunant
Henry Dunant went bankrupt in 1867 and spent decades in poverty and obscurity before the 1901 prize. A newspaper story had brought him back to public notice only six years earlier.
Q 12Which US president issued the Lieber Code, a rulebook for armies in the field that predates the first Geneva Convention?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln put the code into force in April 1863, sixteen months before the treaty was signed. Its author was a German-born legal scholar and a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars.
Q 13Which city hosted the 1899 and 1907 peace conferences whose treaties on weapons sit alongside the Geneva Conventions?
Q 21Which wartime practice does the Fourth Geneva Convention outlaw in a blunt sentence just three words long?
Pillage
Pillage is prohibited, says Article 33, and nothing more. The First Convention carries the idea onto the battlefield, where armies must stop the wounded and the dead from being robbed.
Q 22Which tactic is banned by the Fourth Geneva Convention rule that a civilian's presence cannot make a target immune?
Human shields
Human shields are outlawed for captured soldiers as well: the Third Convention forbids holding prisoners of war where their presence would protect a military site from attack.
Q 23Which practice does Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions ban alongside murder, torture and degrading treatment?
Taking hostages
The Hague
The Hague treaties govern the weapons and methods of fighting, while Geneva's protect the people caught up in a war. In 1949 a Geneva convention replaced the 1907 Hague rules on the wounded at sea.
Q 14Which emblem did a 2005 protocol to the Geneva Conventions add as a sign with no religious or national meaning?
Red Crystal
The Red Crystal has the same legal status as the two older signs. A national society may also display its own emblem inside the crystal's red frame.
Q 15Which country used the Red Lion and Sun, an emblem the Geneva Conventions still recognize, until 1980?
Iran
Iran dropped the emblem because the lion and sun were tied to the monarchy its revolution had just deposed. It reserved the right to bring the symbol back, and the treaties still list it.
Q 16Which task does the Third Geneva Convention class as dangerous labor that prisoners of war may do only as volunteers?
Clearing mines
Clearing mines is the one job the treaty singles out as dangerous. Prisoners also cannot be given work that would be seen as humiliating for a soldier of the army holding them.
Q 17When must prisoners of war be released and sent home under the Third Geneva Convention?
Once active hostilities end
Once active hostilities end, prisoners must go home without delay. The 1929 treaty had tied their return to the conclusion of peace, which caused trouble when no peace treaty followed the fighting.
Q 18Which war-zone professionals does Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions say must be treated as civilians?
Journalists
Journalists get the same protection as any civilian under Article 79. War correspondents accredited to an army are treated differently: if captured, they become prisoners of war.
Q 19The 1949 Geneva Conventions were drawn up in two equally authentic languages: English and which other?
French
French stands beside English as an authentic text of all four treaties. The conventions also ordered official translations into Russian and Spanish.
Q 20Which practice does the Fourth Geneva Convention ban in Article 33, along with all intimidation or terrorism?
Collective punishment
Collective punishment is ruled out by the article's opening line: no one may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Reprisals against civilians and their property are banned too.
Taking hostages is one of four things the article bans at any time and in any place. The last on the list is executing anyone without a judgment from a properly constituted court.
Q 24Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, what may an occupier not transfer into the territory it holds?
Its own population
Its own population may not be moved in, and the same article bars the reverse: deporting or forcibly transferring local people out of the territory, whatever the motive.
Q 25Which phrase do the Geneva Conventions use for fighters put out of action by wounds, sickness or surrender?
Hors de combat
Hors de combat means out of the fight, and anyone in that state may not be deliberately targeted. The treaties protect such soldiers alongside medical staff and civilians in the battle zone.
Q 26In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions protected detainees held at which site?
Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay detainees were covered by Common Article 3, the court held in 2006, so the military commissions set up to try them were unlawful. Congress passed a new commissions law within months.
Q 27The UN set up special courts to try Geneva Convention violations in the former Yugoslavia and which African country?
Rwanda
Rwanda's court and its Yugoslav twin were created by the Security Council, which used its authority under the UN Charter to investigate and prosecute the alleged crimes.
Q 28Which fighters does Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions say have no right to be treated as prisoners of war?
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are denied the status of lawful fighters as well. The protocol's Article 47 gives the most widely accepted international definition of the term, though some countries have never endorsed it.
Q 29Which group of countries has ratified all four Geneva Conventions of 1949?
Every UN member state
Every UN member state has ratified them, along with the Holy See, Palestine and the Cook Islands. Very few treaties have been accepted so widely.
Q 30Which is the only kind of work captured sergeants can be made to do under the Third Geneva Convention?
Supervision
Supervision is the limit for sergeants and other non-commissioned officers, while officers cannot be compelled to do any job at all. Either group may ask for something suitable to do.