Writer, Activist, UN Ambassador
This month's Unsung Hero is a person with a life story that crosses categories and 
has touched the lives of many people in a number of ways.
Waris Dirie, whose name means “desert flower”, grew up in a family from a desert area in Somalia near the Ethiopian border. At a very young age, she was forced to undergo the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as a rite of passage as a female. Although FGM is a tradition that is culturally accepted in some regions even today, it is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of women each year and causes physical and emotional injury to those who sustain it.
Waris Dirie's story is a remarkable one. She escaped from an obligatory marriage to an older man at the age of thirteen and managed to move to the United Kingdom to begin a new life. She struggled and persevered, performing odd jobs to survive. It was there that her beauty was discovered, and her life as a supermodel began. Her career flourished and, over time, she found the courage to speak out to the public against the practice of FGM by sharing her own personal experiences as a survivor. In news interviews she speaks candidly about how shocked her fellow model colleagues were that she survived the practice and could talk about it so openly. Her reaction to these comments is that it is simply her duty to help prevent this from happening to other women and girls in developing countries and around the world.
In 1997, she was appointed Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation by the United Nations, touring African countries in order to increase awareness about and support programs for eradicating FGM. That same year, she published a biography entitled “Desert Flower”, and in 2002 a book called “Desert Dawn” about her visit to her family in Somalia, 20 years after her escape. Just last year, she completed another book entitled “Desert Children” which critically examines the current practice of FGM within Diaspora communities in Europe.
In closing Women's History Month, we celebrate Waris Dirie as an activist, writer, ambassador, fashion model, and spokesperson. Through international advocacy and awareness, she has demonstrated tremendous courage and passion to improving the status of women and human rights overall.
To read more about the life story of Waris Dirie, you can visit: http://www.fgmnetwork.org/articles/Waris.html
For information about the Waris Dirie Foundation and more about the issue of FGM, please visit: http://waris-dirie-foundation.com/
