Waris Dirie is a Somali-born author, model, actress and activist who was forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) at age five and fled her home country at age 13 to escape an arranged marriage.
She is a powerful advocate against FGM, a religious-cultural practice that involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitals for non-medical reasons. After fleeing Somalia, Dirie went on to become a supermodel. Her autobiography, “Desert Flower,” is a remarkable story of courage that was made into a film in 2009.
