CCPR/C/115/D/2005/2010 If receiving States are to be regarded as assuming responsibility for the trial and conviction of their nationals in other States as part of the transfer process, a receiving State may well be reluctant to agree to the return of its nationals without a comprehensive review of the processes that led to their convictions, an outcome that would risk negating the humanitarian and rehabilitative objectives of prisoner transfer schemes. (Para. 89.) Australia adds that bilateral agreements on prisoner transfer with a foreign country are not to be regarded as a means of endorsing that country’s criminal justice system, or the trial process or sentence in a particular case. The transfer process does not involve an evaluation of the foreign conviction or sentence, but rather considers the prisoner’s long-term welfare and rehabilitation.Taking a position that Australia could progress an individual transfer application or effect the actual transfer of a person only where there exists full confidence in the relevant foreign country’s criminal justice system (or the trial process and conviction in a particular case) would be incompatible with the humanitarian, rehabilitative and social objects and purposes of international transfer schemes. The party that stands to lose the most from non-cooperation in prisoner transfers is the prisoner, not the sending State. International prisoner transfer is not about transnational criminal cooperation; rather, it is a humanitarian and rehabilitative mechanism. (Para. 94) 7. I fully endorse the well-formulated stand taken by the State party and find it to be wholly compatible with the purpose that the Covenant seeks to achieve. 8. International transfer of prisoners creates an opportunity for prisoners to be detained closer home, to receive visits from relatives, to be detained with fellow countrymen and to benefit from rehabilitation programmes that would permit their reinsertion in local society. They are in line with and implement the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, now being revised by the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules) before the General Assembly, more specifically rule 59 which stipulates that: Prisoners shall be allocated, to the extent possible to prisons close to their homes or their places if social rehabilitation. 9. The interpretation given by the majority is damaging to the concept of international prisoner transfer arrangements if transferee State parties are going to be accused of condoning human rights violations in transferor States when they enter into such agreements. It may ultimately also discourage States from adhering to the Optional Protocol, thereby denying individuals the opportunity to seek protection of their rights. 11