After a consultations procedure, the States Parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have nominated consensus candidate Fatou B. Bensouda of the Gambia for consideration by their Assembly. The formal election will take place at UN Headquarters at the 10th Session of this Assembly on December 12, 2011, and according to the announcement at the ICC official web site, she will assume her post on June 16, 2012.  The nature of the consensus process is intended to assure that this candidate will in fact be the new prosecutor by general agreement. The choice of this highly regarded lawyer, who is Deputy Prosecutor at the court, may well signal the next phase in the history of the court because she hails from a sub-Saharan African jurisdiction, and this region has been a focus of pending cases. Her previous experience included time as a Legal Adviser and Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as well as legal posts in Gambia both within and outside the government.