Second Boer War concentration camps in the context of "Colony of Natal"

Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement rather than confinement after having been convicted of some crime. Use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities. The word internment is also occasionally used to describe a neutral country's practice of detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war, under the Hague Convention of 1907.

Interned persons may be held in prisons or in facilities known as internment camps or concentration camps. The term concentration camp originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps.

A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitation or punishment.

Prominent examples of historic concentration camps include the British confinement of non-combatants during the Second Boer War, the mass internment of Japanese-Americans by the US during the Second World War, the Nazi concentration camps (which later morphed into extermination camps), and the Soviet labour camps or gulag.