Sami is a Syrian human rights activist and advocate with a strong background in International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights Law and Refugee Law. Before joining Columbia as a CUSDS-MS student in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, Sami worked with Crisis Action at their UN Office on many advocacy activities to ensure protection of civilians in armed conflicts, engaging policy makers and stakeholders at the UN Security Council. Sami lived in Lebanon for 7 years and worked with the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), and focused on social justice, poverty, and the Implementation of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the ESCWA Region. He also interned at the UN Security Council in New York City and worked with diplomatic missions on maintaining international peace and security. Sami is a published scholar, his work is entitled “The Kurdish Question in Syria and the Antagonism with Pan-Arabism”. His main areas of research are sectarianism and ethnicity in MENA region, citizenship, rural-urban social disparities, and documenting human rights abuses.