been the establishment by treaty, the Rome Statute of 1998, of the International Criminal Court -- setting up a permanent court to hear cases of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, with no time limitation on its ability to prosecute. But all international law -- as much as it pains international lawyers to confront this reality -- is ultimately politics. Which means that while the international courts and tribunals, and other legal strategies, are important elements in the mass atrocity prevention and reaction toolbox, whether these tools are actually applied depends on political will -- on international consensus about the relevant norms, and international cooperation in applying them. And it is that element of political will, and the practical cooperation which it makes possible, which has been profoundly lacking, not just for decades but for centuries, in the case of major war crimes and other mass atrocity crimes. That brings us to the second piece of good news -- on which I want to focus for the rest of this lecture -- that we have in the last decade in fact taken a giant stride forward in addressing the normative problem, that question of political will, with the birth and evolution, of the new principle of "the responsibility to protect" (R2P for short). [1] The concept was initiated in the 2001 report of that name by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which I co-chaired with the African diplomat Mohammed Sahnoun, and which was established specifically