In the late 1990s the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that more than 130 million girls and women had undergone some form of FGM. In this capacity Dirie traveled and spoke extensively, vigorously pursuing her goal of preventing future generations of women from suffering as she had.

Her celebrity status helped to catapult the topic into the public eye, and in 1997 she was appointed as the United Nations Population Fund’s special ambassador for the elimination of FGM. Her modeling career was chronicled in the 1995 BBC documentary A Nomad in New York.ĭirie, who had undergone FGM at about age five, overcame personal and cultural barriers to speak openly about it during a 1996 magazine interview. She went on to appear on the runways of Paris, Milan, and New York in advertising campaigns for top beauty brands, including Revlon and Chanel and in leading fashion magazines such as Elle, Glamour, and Vogue. SpA’s exclusive Pirelli Calendar and appeared in the James Bond film The Living Daylights. In 1987 she graced the cover of the multinational holding company Pirelli & C. In 1983, at age 18, a woman on the street approached Dirie about modeling and directed her to the British photographer Terence Donovan. She was illiterate, but she found work in the kitchen of a fast-food restaurant and a room in a facility run by the YMCA, and she took classes to learn to read and write English. When his tenure ended, Dirie decided to stay in London illegally.

At about age 13 she ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage with a much older man she embarked on a long and treacherous journey that took her through the desert to Mogadishu and, from there, eventually to London to serve as a maid in the home of an uncle who was beginning a term as an ambassador. Much of Dirie’s childhood was spent tending to the family’s herd and obtaining enough food and water to survive. Waris Dirie, (born 1965, Galcaio, Som.), Somalian fashion model, author, and women’s rights activist known for her efforts to eliminate female genital mutilation (FGM), also called female circumcision.ĭirie was one of 12 children born into a large nomadic family living near the Somalia’s border with Ethiopia. Post Views: 68 WARIS DIRIE A DAUGHTER OF A NOMADIC FAMILY FROM THE REGION OF GALLACAIO, IN THE SOMALI DESERT ON THE BORDER WITH ETHIOPIA.

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