The United States on Friday, June 19 became a full member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, having previously shunned the three-year-old body.
The world now waits to see what this change of course will mean for international dialogue on human rights.
President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan may be a wanted man, but his day in court could be years away.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir in March 2009, charging that his government has been promoting widespread killing and rape among millions of civilians displaced by the ongoing civil war in Darfur and preventing food and medicine from reaching those civilians. Since then, Bashir has defied the warrant and remained in power in Sudan.
