Despite the dispatch of UN peacekeepers to Darfur and the issuing of international arrest warrants for leaders of the genocide, the killing goes on. So does the burning of villages, the bombing of schools and the systematic rape of women and girls. And it will continue until the Security Council shows the will to stop it. The Council needs to get more peacekeepers, helicopters and reconnaissance planes in the field, enforce the arrest warrants and increase diplomatic and financial pressure to get Sudan to stop obstructing the work of the peacekeepers. But the Council has shown little urgency in doing any of that.

But a minority of Council members, led by China, have let their economic interests trump their moral and legal responsibility to thwart genocide. If China is prepared to take a tougher line in the Security Council, it could make a huge difference. The Bush administration has its heart in the right place on Darfur. But what’s needed is stronger action by the Council as a whole. Darfur’s plight is not yet hopeless, but without greater international commitment it may become so. As the ICC prosecutor told the Security Council on June 5, it takes a lot of planning and organisation to commit massive crimes. “But mostly,” he said, “it requires that the rest of the world look away and do nothing.”