“Never again” is the phrase that is always uttered after an international atrocity. It is what is said every

time there is an event to commemorate the Holocaust. It was what was said after the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and after the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. And yet the Libyan regime is killing its people in the streets, without much prospect of effective international intervention to stop the bloodshed. Libya is not so much a case of “never again” as “oh no, not again”.

It is not that the world has done nothing. Over the weekend, the UN passed a unanimous resolution that included a travel ban for senior Libyan officials and asset seizures. There was also a rare referral to the International Criminal Court. By the standards of the UN, this was fairly tough stuff.