A former Wanganui Collegiate school student who wants to become secretary-general of the United Nations will take a further step on January 12 towards that goal. Ihma Shareef, 20, will lead a New Zealand delegation of 18 school children on a United Nations Youth Association trip to The Hague International ModelUnited Nations. The group will be away for three weeks. Miss Shareef, from the Maldives, worked there for the United Nations last year after the tsunami. In the course of that work she met UN secretary-general Kofi Anan and informed him of her ambition. She said Mr Anan told her it was great someone so young believed in the UN and that he hoped her ambitions would take her far. Miss Shareef attended Collegiate School from 1999-2002. She is in her third year at Victoria University, where she is studying law, international relations, political science and sociology. Miss Shareef met Prime Minister Helen Clark last year, when both spoke at Parliament at the opening of the national model UN, which Miss Shareef organised. She said her interest in the UN stemmed from an interest in international conflicts and third world problems. She had always been interested in international relations and wanted to do aid and third world work. That could involve work in refugee camps in places like Africa. Whilst she was interested in "the diplomatic side of things," she was interested more in aid work. Miss Shareef was in Wanganui this week visiting Brian and Annette Maher, with whom she lived for several years. "Annette and Brian have raised me," she said. Her father, Riluwan, had met Mr and Mrs Maher in Wanganui when he was in New Zealand attending university.
