The United Nations Security Council once again deadlocked over what to do about the increasing carnage in Syria, particularly in the besieged city of Aleppo. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed frustration at the lack of any decisive action by the Council. Yet, while the UN’s own procurement division continues to do millions of dollars’ worth of business with individuals and entities tied to the Syrian regime and its president Bashar al-Assad despite the ongoing atrocities, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is demanding that the UN procurement division target Israel for blacklisting and boycott. On October 8th, France and Spain, with the strong backing of the Obama administration, introduced a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council demanding a full cessation of all hostilities in Syria, including an end to all aerial bombardments over Aleppo, as well as the provision of immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian access. Russia introduced its own competing draft. While there was a fair amount of overlap between the two drafts, the Russian draft omitted any reference to the cessation of aerial bombings and revived the idea of modest weekly 48 hour humanitarian pauses in fighting. It also insisted on the need to verifiably separate “moderate opposition forces from ‘Jabhut Al-Nusra’ as a key priority,” which Russia has accused the United States of failing to accomplish.

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