Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today has, to use a well-worn phrase, been on a personal journey, which in different ways is heart-rending, life-affirming and inspirational.

Wairis Diri was born into a nomadic tribe in central Somalia almost six decades ago. Like almost all girls

from her background, she suffered the trauma of female genital mutilation when she was just five years old.

At 13, she ran away, first to Mogadishu, and then thanks to a relative who happened to be going to the UK,

to London. She was then spotted by a photographer, and a short time later was on the books of

an elite modelling agency. Her career took off from the face of Chanel to the cover of Vogue,

from the catwalks of New York to Paris, even to a bit part in a Bond movie. But then in her 30s,

Waris Deere turned away from the glamour to focus on a very personal issue. She opened up about

the impact of her own FGM and committed herself to a campaign to eliminate the practice

in her homeland and across the world.

With a simple, stark message, FGM happens because women are oppressed by men.

It's about inequality, power and control.

Waris Diri wants it eradicated.

Can it be done?

Well, she joins me now.

Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you. Yours has been a life of extraordinary change and extraordinary contrasts. I just wonder, now you look back on your childhood, does it seem a very great distance away, or does it still feel close? I would say far away. Somehow it seems

so far my life. If I look back, I feel like I've been here quite while in this planet, really.

Maybe because I've done so much, so fast that I can't remember everything I have done my life.

When it comes to memories, do you really have sharp, focused memories about what it was like,

being a little girl, being raised in Central Samaria?

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