{{Short description|Deal between opposing belligerents in a conflict}} {{Use dmy dates|date=July 2022}}
[[File:Return of the Prisoners of War during Operation Big Switch, Panmunjom, Korea. Communist Prisoners of War ripped off... - NARA - 520998.jpg|thumb|North Korean prisoners of war being returned to North Korea by US authorities during the Korean War]]
A '''prisoner exchange''' or '''prisoner swap''' is a deal between opposing sides in a conflict to release prisoners: prisoners of war, spies, hostages, etc. Sometimes, dead bodies are involved in an exchange.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html|title=Yielding Prisoners, Israel Receives 2 Dead Soldiers|work=New York Times|date=17 July 2008|access-date=8 May 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171014103412/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin|archive-date=14 October 2017}}</ref>
== History == Prisoners exchanged occurred throughout history; a number of large exchanges took places, for example, during the 8th century or so in the Middle East region (see Arab–Byzantine prisoner exchanges).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Durak |first=Koray |title=Performance and Ideology in the Exchange of Prisoners between the Byzantines and the Islamic Near Easterners in the Early Middle Ages |date=January 2014 |journal=Medieval and Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean |volume=20 |issue=20 |pages=167–180 |url=https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/M.LMEMS-EB.1.102266 |access-date=2025-07-17 |series=Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies |publisher=Brepols Publishers |doi=10.1484/m.lmems-eb.1.102266 |isbn=978-2-503-54691-9|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
=== Modern era ===
==== Geneva Conventions ==== Under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners who ''cannot'' contribute to the war effort because of illness or disability are entitled to be repatriated to their home country. That is regardless of number of prisoners so affected; the detaining power cannot refuse a genuine request.<ref>{{cite wikisource |wslink=Geneva Convention/Third Geneva Convention |title=Third Geneva Convention |year=1949}}</ref>
Under the Geneva Convention (1929), this is covered by Articles 68 to 74, and the annex. One of the largest exchange programmes was run for prisoners of war by the International Red Cross during World War II under these terms.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/111308/sxFormerPOWPaysTribute.html|title=Former POW pays tribute to the French, Red Cross|publisher=New Jersey Jewish News|date=18 November 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130914051958/http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/111308/sxFormerPOWPaysTribute.html|access-date=8 May 2018|archive-date=2013-09-14}}</ref> Under the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, that is covered by Articles 109 to 117.
The Second World War in Yugoslavia saw a brutal struggle between the armed forces of the Third Reich and the communist-led Partisans. Despite that, the two sides negotiated prisoner exchanges virtually from the beginning of the war. Under extraordinary circumstances, these early contacts evolved into a formal exchange agreement, centered on the creation of a neutral zone, possibly the only such in occupied Europe, where prisoners were regularly swapped until late April 1945, saving several thousand lives.<ref>Gaj Trifković, ''"Making Deals with the Enemy: Partisan-German Contacts and Prisoner Exchanges in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945"'' in: Global War Studies 01/2013; 10(2):6–37.</ref>
==See also== *Extradition *Humanitarian exchange *Hostage diplomacy
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{commons category}} {{Authority control}}
Category:Peace mechanisms Category:Prisoner exchanges Exchange {{mil-stub}}