Waris Dirie

Waris Dirie (Somali: Waris Diiriye; born 21 October 1965) is a Somali model, author, actress and human rights activist in the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM). From 1997 to 2003, she was a UN special ambassador against FGM. In 2002 she founded her own organization in Vienna, the Desert Flower Foundation. She has won numerous awards recognizing her work on eradicating FGM, including the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (2007).

Born in Somalia, she moved to London where she began her modeling career. She was a model for top brands such as Chanel, Levi's, L'Oréal and Revlon. As a model, Dirie was the first black woman to appear in an Oil of Olay advertisement. In 1987, Dirie played a minor role in the James Bond film The Living Daylights.

In 1997, at the height of her modeling career, Dirie spoke publicly for the first time with the women's magazine Marie Claire about the FGM that she had undergone as a child, and would become a UN special ambassador against FGM that same year. She has created a platform for raising awareness about FGM that includes numerous foundations, campaigns, books, and documentaries. Her first book, Desert Flower (1998), is an autobiography that went on to become an international bestseller, selling over 11 million copies worldwide, and inspired the film Desert Flower (2009). She created two foundations: Desert Flower Foundation, an organisation whose goal is to eradicate female genital mutilation worldwide, and the Desert Dawn Foundation, which raises money for schools and clinics in her native Somalia.