Speaking in Kenya, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said it is a “great regret” that the US is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, the Associated Press reports.

The ICC was established in 2002 as the first ever permanent, treaty based tribunal for trying genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, building on the foundations of the ad hoc tribunals (ICTR, ICTY) created in the 1990s.  It is currently investigating situations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Uganda and Sudan.

Rodham Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, originally signed the Rome Statute (the ICC’s underlying treaty) in 2000.  But the treaty was never ratified by Congress and was then ‘unsigned’ by George W. Bush in 2002, on worries about US citizens being brought before the court.

US opposition to the ICC was then further cemented by the enactment of the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, a law authorizing the use of any means necessary to free any US or allied personnel brought to the ICC - effectively a conditional authorization of US intervention in the Netherlands.

Thus the Secretary’s statements indicate a significant policy shift in favor of the court. But for those that hope this shift will result in imminent US membership, reports that the administration in fact remains split on the issue show that this may not happen anytime soon.

On her ten day trip through Africa, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make two stops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - capital Kinshasa and Goma in the east.

Estimates state that conflict in the DRC (a country the size of the US east of the Mississippi) has resulted in 3.5 million to 7.8 million deaths since 1998, and hundreds of thousands of rapes.  Thus international human rights organizations have called on Clinton to urge the prosecution of those military personnel responsible for human rights abuses - in particular ongoing crimes of sexual violence.

In fact, the stated purpose of the Secretary’s visit to Goma is to put a ‘great deal of focus on the issue of sexual- and gender-based violence which is occurring in the eastern Congo’ and she ‘intends to encourage and push the Congolese Government as well as MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force there, to take a much more aggressive stance against gender-based violence.’

Following UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s report on the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon as recognized in Security Council Resolution 1820, this trip needs to be a step towards general recognition of the issue’s importance in conflict situations - not just in the DRC, but across the globe.