UN creates education fund for refugee children

Acting in his role as U.N. special envoy for global education, Brown said the fund hopes to reach many of the estimated 20 million school-age refugees and displaced persons around the globe who are being denied an education as part of "the largest population of displaced girls and boy since 1945."

"When we ask ourselves what breaks the lives of once thriving young children, it's not just the Mediterranean wave that submerges the life vest and it's not just the food convoy that does not arrive in Syria, it's also the absence of hope — the soul crushing certainty that there is nothing to plan or prepare for, not even a place in school," Brown said, speaking by telephone to reporters at the U.N.