Rihanna made headlines today, not just for the announcement of her Fenty beauty line’s launch date, but because of her charity work in Malawi. The singer, who is a global ambassador for the Global Partnership for Education, has funded a five-year bike-sharing program that gives girls better access to education. And, this comes just a week after she had a chummy chat with French President Emmanuel Macron. So, what will it take for Rihanna to be named a UN Goodwill Ambassador?
Since the dawn of advertising, familiar faces have been used in advertising. It was a natural leap for diplomats to use celebs as instruments to market their ideology. The UN Ambassador role taps an A-lister's fame and reach to spread their message. Household names like Leonardo DiCaprio, Katy Perry and Pavarotti, have all had stints holding this title.
Since 2005 Rihanna has sold 230million records, made eight albums, won eight Grammys, sung on numerous top ten hits and become one of the best-selling artists of all time. We can all agree her celebrity is incontestable. She’s also founded the Clara Lionel Foundation, which is named after her grandparents Clara and Lionel Braithwaite, that raises money to benefit impoverished communities with healthcare and education internationally. Since its conception in 2012, the singer’s organisation has offered university scholarships, access to training programmes and raised money for emergency response services globally. The charity’s annual Diamond Ball raised over $3million (£2.2million) last year. So, her charitable credentials are undisputable too.
The UN decides their Goodwill Ambassadors on a case-by-case basis. They look at the spokesperson’s reach, their philanthropy and whether they would be the right conduit to publicise the UN’s mandate. The organisation's guidelines say they must, ‘show good citizenship and are passionate, courageous, inspiring, caring, principled, credible, and capable of acting as influential advocates for the rights of women, men and young people to sexual and reproductive health; show leadership in their professions and readiness to use their social capital to promote UNFPA’s mandate, especially sexual and reproductive health and rights’. They also need to be, ‘convincing public speakers on the sensitive topics of women’s sexual health and reproductive health and rights, gender equality and male responsibility, and have a, reasonably good reputation,’ while being a, ‘popular eminent personality, but does not hold or seek any public, political or religious office.’ If this isn’t Rihanna, then who bloody is it? I’m starting the campaign right here, right now, to get RiRi the title she deserves!
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.