Munira Khalif is the US Youth Observer to the United Nations. This is a position created in partnership between the State Department and the United Nations Association of the United States to help give youth a voice in official and semi-official diplomatic settings. Munira is a student at Harvard, though she is taking some time off to focus on this new role, in which she will serve for a year.

And in this conversation Munira discusses her work and what is involved in giving youth a voice at the UN and in diplomatic settings and why she is using her position to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. When we spoke, Munira had recently returned from India where she participated in the Global Entrepreneurship and we kick off discussing that trip. We then have a broader conversation of what it means to engage youth around issues of importance to the broader UN-system.

Meet the US Youth Observer to the UN