A UN Peacekeeping Force is Caught in the Crossfire of Escalating Conflict in the Golan Heights Mark Leon Goldberg May 11, 2018UN Peacekeepers have been stationed in the Golan Heights since 1974. The mission, known as the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF, deployed to the border region of Israel and Syria following a ceasefire in May 1974. Technically, UNDOF is su...
UPDATE: A Chemical Weapon Has Been Used in Syria. What Does the Security Council Do Now? Mark Leon Goldberg April 9, 2018UPDATE: The Security Council is meeting again today, potentially on separate resolutions offered by the United States and Russia. The key difference between the two resolutions is that the United States wants an independent international investigation to be ab...
The White House Turns to the UN to Fight ISIS’ Re-Emergence in Syria. (But Denies it the Funding to Do So) Mark Leon Goldberg April 4, 2018The White House sought to address some confusion over President Trump's suggestion yesterday that American troops should quit Syria. The statement released this morning was still somewhat cryptic, but it did unambiguously call on the United Nations to "work to...
PODCAST: With the Devastation of Eastern Ghouta, The Syria Conflict Enters a New Phase Mark Leon Goldberg February 22, 2018 The conflict in Syria has entered a new phase. ISIS has been defeated, yet in many ways the war is metastasizing.In Eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus, the war is as brutal as ever. After days of extremely heavy bombing, the UN secr...
How ISIS May Face Justice for their Atrocities Mark Leon Goldberg November 17, 2017Over the last several weeks, ISIS has been systematically losing territory. Its last stronghold in Iraq, the city of Hawija, was liberated in early October. A few weeks later, ISIS' de-facto capital in Raqqa, Syria fell to US-backed forces.ISIS no long...
A UN Official (Correctly) Calls Trump’s New Travel Ban “Collective Punishment” Mark Leon Goldberg September 25, 2017New travel restrictions imposed by the United States hurts ordinary people for one reason only: their nationality.Jan Egeland is the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations. He is also the former top UN ...
The Number of Refugee Children Out of School is Increasing at an Alarming Rate Mark Leon Goldberg September 21, 2017Amid all the pageantry, hoopla and media circus that is UN week in New York there is always some interesting and substantive work being done on important global issues. Sometimes these issues are not on top of the agenda of world leaders (though they proba...
Can this Woman Bring Justice to Syria? Kimberly Curtis July 7, 2017Six years in, the conflict in Syria is synonymous now with the brutality of war. Currently, there are more than 5.1 million registered Syrian refugees with another 6.3 million Syrians displaced within the country. The number killed is harder to pin down, but t...
What Political Science Can Teach Us About The US Airstrikes on Syria Mark Leon Goldberg April 13, 2017Moscow cast its eighth veto at the Security Council in defense of the Syrian government yesterday. The vote in question would have dispatched a team of UN investigators to the site of the chemical weapons attack and compelled the Syrian government to coope...
