Activist / Civil Society Organisation Director for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation
Ifrah Ahmed is an extraordinarily strong and courageous woman. She has overcome unimaginable adversity and turn it into a force for good, dedicating herself to work to protect others from what she survived.
Ifrah is an Irish/Somali activist, campaigner and CSO director working for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Having arrived in Ireland in 2006, aged 17, she set up her first organisation, United Youth of Ireland in 2008, in response to youth immigrant integration issues in her country of adoption. From personal experience, she leant her voice to the FGM campaign in Ireland and further afield in Europe and turned her focus to the specific gender issue of FGM by founding the Civil Society Organisation that carries her name, Ifrah Foundation in 2012. Now a charitable foundation registered in Ireland and Somalia, Ifrah Foundation has partnered on a wide variety of projects delivering impactful results with international NGOs as varied as Amnesty International, UNICEF and UNFPA in East Africa and has formed strategic partnerships with governmental agencies on policy and legislation, working at ministerial level as well as with religious leaders, international media experts, particularly the Global Media Campaign founded by The Guardian and community empowerment and education programs at grass roots level.
Ifrah illuminating the GPO in Dublin for the 2020 International Herstory Light Festival
Her focus over the past five years has been to deliver programs in Somalia intended to provide the evidence based results that inform Ifrah Foundation’s scoping of its proposed national action plan for the abandonment of FGM in Somalia in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of FGM eradication by 2030.
On April 3rd, 2020, a movie - A Girl From Mogadishu - based on the testimony of Ifrah, and directed by Mary McGuckian, will be released in theaters across Ireland. A Girl from Mogadishu celebrates the power of testimony, ‘for when women find the courage to stand-up, speak out, and tell their truth, the impact can be so inspiring and empowering that act as a meaningful catalyst for change.’