Waris Dirie

Waris Dirie has transitioned from a successful international model to a global human rights activist, advocating for the eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM). After being discovered by photographer Mike Goss, Waris Dirie launched a highly successful international modeling career. In 1987, she was notably photographed by Terence Donovan for the Pirelli Calendar, appearing alongside Naomi Campbell. Dirie achieved significant recognition, working for brands including Chanel, Levi’s, L’Oréal, and Revlon, and becoming the first Black woman to be featured in an Oil of Olay advertisement.

In 1998, she authored her groundbreaking autobiography, ‘Desert Flower,’ which became an international bestseller, selling over 11 million copies worldwide and adapted into a film in 2009. Dirie founded the Desert Flower Foundation in Vienna in 2002 to raise global awareness and combat FGM, and the Desert Dawn Foundation to support schools and clinics in Somalia. Her literary contributions continued with ‘Desert Dawn’ (2002), receiving the Corine Literature Prize in the same year. Her activism garnered further international recognition, including the World Social Award from Mikhail Gorbachev in 2004, and the Romero Prize in 2005, the same year she published ‘Desert Children’.

She expanded her foundational work, opening the Desert Flower Center in Berlin (2013), establishing the Desert Flower Surgical Training Center in Amsterdam (2014), the Desert Flower Center Scandinavia in Stockholm (2015), and the Centre Fleur du Desert in Paris (2017), all dedicated to FGM victims. Her later works include ‘Saving Safa’ (2013) and ‘My Africa – The Journey’ (2017). Dirie received the Sunhak Peace Prize in 2019 and, the same year, launched the ‘End FGM’ campaign with Coco de Mer and Rankin, and announced a musical based on her life story, ‘Wüstenblume,’ which premiered in 2020.