Lego Foundation to donate $100 million to Syria, Rohingya child refugees

The Lego Foundation says it will donate $100 million to US non-profit educational organisation Sesame Workshop to fund projects aimed at helping young children affected by the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh and the civil war in Syria.

The Danish foundation said Wednesday that the grant "will benefit some of the world's most vulnerable children and call attention to the critical importance of learning through play to set them on a path of healthy growth and development."

The Lego Foundation, set up in 1986, owns 25 percent of the shares in Lego Group, the privately-held Danish toymaker.

Danish business newspaper Boersen said the donation is the largest ever by the Billund, Denmark-based foundation advancing children's causes.

Sesame Workshop, producers of "Sesame Street," will receive the grant over five years.

Humanitarian crisis and 'genocide'

Around 700,000 Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh since August 2017 following a military crackdown in Rakhine state.

This year, the UN called for a genocide tribunal to judge the generals responsible for the massacres.

A 440-page UN report into the genocide has detailed the number of attrocities committed by Myanmar's military against the Muslim minority, who continue to live as second-class citizens in the country or in terrible conditions in Bangladesh camps.

The Syrian war began when the Baath regime, in power since 1963 and led by President Bashar al-Assad, responded with military force to peaceful protests demanding democratic reforms during the Arab Spring wave of uprisings, triggering an armed rebellion fuelled by mass defections from the Syrian army.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in the war, mostly by the regime and its powerful allies, and millions have been displaced both inside and outside of Syria.

The brutal tactics pursued mainly by the regime, which have included the use of chemical weapons, sieges, mass executions and torture against civilians have led to war crimes investigations.