Yesterday, former United Nations Secretary-General and current Joint Special Envoy of the UN and the League of Arab States on the Syrian Crisis Kofi Annan gave a report to the UN Security Council  on the rapidly deteriorating situation in Syria.

Via a videolink from Geneva, Switzerland, Annan told the Council that the UN may be the “only remaining chance” to stabilize the Middle Eastern country. “There is a profound concern that the country could otherwise descend into full civil war, and the implications of that are quite frightening,” he said. “We cannot allow that to happen.”

There are currently 300 unarmed UN military observers in Syria as part of a UN mission to monitor a ceasefire that Annan has been attempting to broker between the government and rebel forces. Annan said that their presence has a calming effect in the nation but that the “levels of violence and abuses are unacceptable.”

The UN estimates that more than 9,000 Syrians, mostly civilans, have died since the uprising becan in March 2011.

For more information on the six-point peace plan that Annan is attempting to implement in Syria, see our earlier blog post. International Debates covered the beginning of the Syrian uprising in-depth in its September 2011 issue, Syria Crackdown, and we will continue to cover the ongoing conflict and resulting humanitarian crisis in Syria.