And I thought, after all this atrocity, this is how human beings really pray.

In July, the European Union again suffered the horror of a major terrorist atrocity.

I spent the better part of a decade looking at American responses to mass atrocity and genocide.

The strain on Syria s neighbors is immense, and the conflict is inexorably seeping into the wider region. Both government and rebel forces have committed atrocity crimes.

And I'd like to start by sharing with you one moment that to me sums up what there is to know about American and democratic responses to mass atrocity.

When such means are not sufficient, the Security Council has the responsibility to take action under the Charter, with authority, with efficiency and without hesitation in situations of mass atrocity.

As ever, the unpredictable a terrorist atrocity or a rash decision by a national leader will take its toll. But much of what happens tomorrow will be a result of history.

He is disturbed by reports of the ongoing practice of atrocity demining whereby civilians are forced to act as human mine sweepers by the military, resulting in severe mutilation and sometimes death.

The basic problem is that the Islamic State s territorial gains are being approached from three completely different perspectives, demanding three different types of operational responses. There is the humanitarian mission to protect civilian populations in Iraq and Syria from mass atrocity crimes.

In the face of a grotesquely violent enemy, an even more terrifying state apparatus of organized violence emerged. In effect, Suharto s visual politics of atrocity and terror created a new reality from the violence and terror associated with the demise of the old.

The Holocaust was not the main issue at stake in the Nuremberg Trials. Nevertheless, the allies thought that the Nazi project of exterminating an entire people called for an entirely new legal approach, to ensure that such an atrocity would never happen again.

One response is that it is almost impossible to find any such genuinely high minded rationale for any veto ever cast in a mass atrocity situation. Another is that any UN Security Council resolution requires at least nine affirmative votes (in a Council of 15).

Although no outcome was formally agreed or made public, several themes emerged from the Beijing meeting. Taken together, they offer reason for confidence that it may be possible to recreate international consensus, so long missing in Syria, about how to deal with the hardest mass atrocity cases.

The moral argument that the veto should not be used in cases of mass atrocity crimes is overwhelming. The P5 have obligations under the UN Charter, as well as international humanitarian and human rights law, not to undermine the effectiveness of the UN or that body of law.

If they do, it should not be viewed as a rearguard action designed to undermine the R2P norm, but rather an effort to assume co ownership of it. In terms of getting serious about saying never again to mass atrocity crimes, that is about as positive a development as anyone could hope for.

This conviction lies behind the establishment of international humanitarian law and the supranational courts that address violations of it. And it underpinned the adoption of the responsibility to protect principle, which demands that the international community defend a country s people from mass atrocity crimes when their own government fails to do so.

It is too late now for non military tools of coercion to have much effect, although Security Council threats of International Criminal Court prosecution for atrocity crimes including any use of chemical weapons must remain on the table . But what of the military response options still strongly favored by many policymakers and pundits?

I am sure the deliberations today, under your able stewardship, Sir, will further strengthen our resolve to promote a culture of peace, one that brings peoples closer across cultures, civilizations and faiths and that, we hope, will create a world order where amity supplants atrocity, harmony overcomes hatred and understanding replaces intolerance.

LONDON As the world comes to terms with the wider implications and consequences of the terrorist atrocity in Paris, an important story risks being lost in the welter of coverage and analysis The increasingly vital role that private companies play in planning for and responding to emergencies. And there s more to the story than that.

I have learned from long experience that to be optimistic about almost anything in international affairs is to run the risk of being thought ignorant or naïve, if not demented. But, on the issue of mass atrocity crimes where the international community has long had good reason for shame real optimism is now justified.

There can be no better demonstration of good international citizenship than a country s willingness to act when it has the capacity to prevent or avert a mass atrocity crime. Obama has recently been criticized, in the context of his attitude toward the Palestinian Israeli peace process, as being cerebral in part of the world that s looking for the visceral.

But international pressure on the P5 has been mounting for the last 15 years and especially since the General Assembly s unanimous embrace in 2005 of the responsibility to protect (R2P) principle. Advocates of the French position want these countries to forswear their veto when a clear majority supports proposed action to mitigate the risk of a mass atrocity crime.

PARIS Back in 2001, France floated a proposal that the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (P5) should voluntarily refrain from using their veto power when dealing with mass atrocity crimes. And now, in the lead up to the commemoration of this year s 70th anniversary of the UN, French President François Hollande s government is actively pursuing the idea again.

In 2005, on the UN s 60th anniversary, the General Assembly, convening at head of state and government level, unanimously endorsed the concept of states responsibility to protect populations at risk of genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. With that vote, the international community began to eradicate the shameful indifference that accompanied the Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, and too many similar catastrophes.

To be fair to the US, such double standards abound among other major powers as well. Russia s invocation of the responsibility to protect to justify its 2008 invasion of Georgia was met with incredulity at the time, and rendered even more cynical by its resolute failure since 2011 to condemn the Syrian regime for mass atrocity crimes against its own people.

CANBERRA US President Barack Obama deserves unconditional support for his decision to use military force to protect the persecuted Yezidi minority from threatened genocide by marauding Islamic State (IS) militants in northern Iraq. The United States action is completely consistent with the principles of the international responsibility to protect (R2P) people at risk of mass atrocity crimes, which was embraced unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005.

But memories of atrocity never seem to fade, as the government fanned anti Japanese riots now taking place in China remind us. The 90th anniversary of the Armenian massacres of 1915, ordered by the ruling Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire and carried out with the help of the Kurds, is another wound that will not heal, but one that must be treated if Turkey s progress toward European Union membership is to proceed smoothly.