Sometimes I wonder where I am from. I am either way ahead or I come from another world. I don't recognise this world.

Many friends have expressed concern that a religious fanatic will try to kill me when I go to Africa. After all, I’ll be speaking out against a crime many fundamentalists consider a holy practice. I’m sure my work will be dangerous, and I admit to being scared…. But my faith tells me to be strong, that God led me down this path for a reason. He has work for me to do. This is my mission. And I believe that long before the day I was born, God chose the day I will die, so I can’t change that. In the meantime, I might as well take a chance, because that’s what I’ve done all my life.

Fashion is fun, ridiculously fun. But it's base and it's wrong. You're not doing anything good for the world. You're just saying, 'Buy it, buy it, buy it.

I still do find it very difficult in the West to connect to this politeness of smiling, not saying how you're thinking or not saying how you really feel.

We need to empower women: provide them with work for their own income, and teach them to become independent of men so they will never have to have their children suffering the same torture.

Well, of course there’s my own experience of being mutilated as a little child. Having gone through this cruel practice and all the long-term consequences that come with it, I just cannot sit back and watch it being done to thousands of little girls every year. I believe that it is my responsibility to use the attention I get to fight against the continuing practice of FGM.

Female genital mutilation targets little girls, baby girls - fragile angels who are helpless, who cannot fight back. It's a crime against a child, a crime against humanity. It's abuse. It's absolutely criminal and we have to stop it.