There are other means by which to protect the rights of terrorists without needing to apply the Geneva Conventions  Under the auspices of the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war can be detained for the duration of hostilities, and are only entitled to return home at the end of the war (International Committee of the Red Cross, 1949). Given the open-ended nature of the war on terror, it is very likely that treating terrorist detainees as POWs will mean they are never released. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the Geneva Conventions protect human rights any better than existing domestic law or policy. In democracies, the accountability of elected politicians and judicial review by independent judges can instead be trusted to ensure that detainees are not abused or mistreated.