Right. "Following the Geneva Treaty" would mean "not offering the protections described in the Geneva Convention(s) to illegal combatants". What the article means to say is that we're going to offer those protections to people whom the treaty explicitly does not protect.
All the "Geneva" discussions of the past few years have made one thing hilariously clear: most people on the left don't have the first clue what the "Geneva Conventions" are. They know they're a nicey-nice thing and that it covers everyone, that's all they really know about them. (Or I should say, "it": the left doesn't seem to know there's more than one Geneva Convention.)
What this means is that the left has successfully removed the incentive for foreign parties to act in accordance with the Conventions, and moved the Conventions from an effort to remove civilians from conflicts to a simple game of gotcha during war. This action will cause many attrocious deaths of innocents, and is dispicable.