Munira Khalif (born 1996) is an American student who served as the 6th United States Youth Observer to the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

in 2018-2019.

Early life and career

Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Khalif is a first-generation

Somali-American Somali Americans are Americans of Somali ancestry. The first ethnic Somalis to arrive in the U.S. were sailors who came in the 1920s from British Somaliland. They were followed by students pursuing higher studies in the 1960s and 1970s, by the l ...

. She attended

Mounds Park Academy Mounds Park Academy (MPA), founded in 1982, is an independent, PreK-12, co-educational, college preparatory day school in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States, serving students from throughout the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. The sch ...

for high school and served as

commencement speaker A commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions and in similar institutions around the world. The commencement ...

, graduating in 2015. Khalif made national headlines in 2015 when she was accepted to all eight

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

schools, as well as Georgetown,

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

and the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. Khalif currently studies economics and government at Harvard University. Khalif co-founded a youth-run non-profit organization called Lighting the Way, which works to make education more accessible and equitable for girls in East Africa. Khalif is an advisor with GirlUp through the

United Nations Foundation The United Nations Foundation is a charitable organization headquartered in Washington, DC, that supports the United Nations and its activities. It was established in 1998 with a $1 billion gift to the United Nations by philanthropist Ted Turner, ...

Role as U.S. Youth Observer to the UN

Khalif was appointed to serve as U.S. Youth Observer to the United Nations in 2017. Created to elevate youth voices in the global policy dialogue, the U.S. Youth Observer to the UN is a role appointed annually by the

U.S. Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

and United Nations Association of the United States of America. As a correspondent between U.S. missions to the UN and American youth, the Youth Observer travels throughout the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to discover the issues important to young Americans and participates with the U.S. delegation at international organization meetings. Thirty other countries currently have U.N. youth observers. Munira was awarded the UN Special Envoy for Global Education’s Youth Courage Award, which honors young people fighting for universal education. She was one of nine recipients chosen from around the world to receive the honor. Munira was invited twice to attend the annual

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

Iftar Iftar ( ar, translit=Iftar Ramadan, إفطار رمضان), also known as (from , , 'breakfast'), (), is the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset. They break their fast at the time of the call to prayer (a ...

dinner, which celebrates Muslim-American trailblazers both in the public and private sector.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khalif, Munira 1997 births 21st-century American politicians 21st-century American women politicians Living people Youth activists Somalian activists Somalian women activists American officials of the United Nations Harvard College alumni