The background noise over Darfur appears to have finally reached its crescendo with the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
Bashir has been waltzing around Sudan with impunity since 1989, promising the international community that the country 'will act as a responsible government' while overseeing the deaths of at least 300,000 people (Khartoum claims that the number is 10,000), and the displacement of approximately 2.7 million.
His actions have won him the dubious honour of becoming the first ever serving head of state indicted by the ICC. Though the panel of three judges claimed there was insufficient evidence to charge Bashir with genocide, he stands accused of two counts of war crimes and five of crimes against humanity in Darfur.
In retaliation to this affront, Bashir has expelled ten foreign aid agencies who, according to him, have undertaken 'activities that act in contradiction to all regulation and laws'.
Organisations including Oxfam, Save the Children, Care and Médecins Sans Frontières, in conjunction with the UN, currently run the world's largest humanitarian operation in Darfur providing humanitarian assistance to more than 1.5 million people. Their expulsion from the region leaves those people with nowhere to turn.
Established in 2002, the ICC has hauled before its tribunal such shady superstars as former Serb President Slobodan Milosevic (who escaped sentencing by dying mid-trial) and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who remains in custody there.
Charles Taylor, the former Liberian President, has been extradited to face trial in front of a Special Court created by the UN for the violence in Sierra Leone. Jean Kambanda, the former Rwandan prime minister, was convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal in another landmark case.
Recently, 'Duch', a top Khmer Rouge leader, was tried in front of a Cambodian UN-established court. A similar set-up may soon find itself faced with the prosecution of top echelon Syrian officials over the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Not since Nuremburg or the Tokyo trials held at the conclusion of the Second World War have courts been given jurisdiction over individual citizens as opposed to just over states. Since the end of the Cold War there have been considerable, though largely unremarked upon, advancements made in the international legal system.
As such, this latest act of the ICC ought to initiate an international patting of backs. Or should it? The African Union has called an emergency meeting in