The United Nations Human Rights Council is holding an emergency session on Syria today amidst the ongoing deadly crackdown by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Ahead of the meeting, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said the death toll in Syria is likely far above the United Nations’ estimate of 4,000.

Navi Pillay: “With regard to statistics, yeah, I will be giving a statistic, but even the statistic I am going to give tomorrow is going to be conservative. We are placing the figure at 4,000, but really the reliable information coming to us is that it’s much more than that. I have said that as soon as there were more and more defectors threatening to take up arms—I said this in August before the Security Council—that there’s going to be a civil war, and at the moment, that’s how I am characterizing this.”