Waris Dirie is a Somali supermodel that turned human rights activist speaking out against the process of FGM, being herself a victim of this practice when she was 5.

At the age of 13, she fled Somalia after being forced to marry a man much older, and settled in London where she worked as a housemaid and then in a Macdonald's.

Her discovery at the age of 18 by the fashion photographer Terrence Donovan was the starting point of her international career as a supermodel.

Appointed in 1996 as UN Special Ambassador for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, she then wrote an autobiographical novel called “Desert Flower”that was later adapted for the cinema.