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Published on Thursday, 25 September 2008 19:00 | 
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From grass hut to supermodel to UN Special Ambassador for women's rights in Africa - the amazing life of Waris Dirie
By Vida Adamoli
Waris Dirie is an ex-supermodel and Bond girl. Revlon, who once used her as the face of their skin care products, called her the most beautiful woman in the world.
But Waris is more than a fashion icon, an envied celebrity with perfect skin, sculpted cheekbones and elongated limbs. A survivor of appalling circumstances, she now fights fearlessly against the terrible practice of Female Genital Mutilation, also called Female Circumcision.
Born into a nomadic clan in Somalia, Waris’s home was a portable hut woven from grass. At the age of five her mother held her down while a local woman circumcised her. At the end of this barbaric procedure (which claimed the lives of two of her sisters and two cousins) she was left with a hole the diameter of a matchstick and barely able to walk.
Aged 13 her father gave her in marriage to a 60-year-old man in exchange for five camels. To escape this fate, Waris walked for nine days across the desert to a sister’s home in Mogadishu. Once there she got a job first as a bricklayer, then as a maid, before eventually making it to London.
To survive as an illegal immigrant in London, Waris scrubbed floors at McDonald's. It was there that she was spotted by the fashion photographer, Terence Donovan, who played Fairy Godmother to her Cinderella. One minute it was mop and bucket, the next she was gracing the covers of magazines everywhere.
She went on to publish her disturbing, rags-to-riches autobiography, Desert Flower, which
became a best-seller. Today she is a fearless campaigner against
Female Genital Mutilation and a UN Special Ambassador for women's
rights in Africa.
Read this fascinating interview
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): The Facts
- FGM is the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia. External genitals include the clitoris, labia, mons pubis (the fatty tissue over the pubic bone), and the urethral and vaginal openings.
- An estimated 3 million girls and women, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, undergo female genital mutilation each year. * FGM is also practiced by some ethnic groups in Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, as well as in parts of India, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
- FGM has become an important issue in Australia, Canada, England, France, and the United States due to the continuation of the practice by immigrants from countries where FGM is common.
- Newborns, Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults Are Affected
- Most girls undergo FGM when they are between 7 and 10 years old.