YOUTH SPEAKER.
Selina Leem, a 23 year old climate warrior from the Marshall Islands, is “a small island girl with big dreams”. She recently finished working as a Youth Representative at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to the UN in New York. Born and raised in Majuro, the capital atoll of the Marshall Islands, Leem credits her grandfather for her deep awareness of the increasing fate of her island home through his stories about how the ice in the North Pole and South Pole were melting and would soon flood the Marshall Islands. Representing the Marshall Islands, Leem was the youngest delegate at the COP21 in Paris. During the closing remarks, then Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony deBrum gave her the opportunity to give the final statement on behalf of her country. Leem told the world that the Paris agreement “should be the turning point in our story; a turning point for all of us.”