A law student making a global impact

Cara Borg Aquilina, aged 21, is a law student at the University of Malta with a longstanding passion for making a positive impact. From a young age, she has been driven by a commitment to social good and civic engagement, first at the local level and later on the international stage.

Her first international experience came at age 14, when she was selected through a Valletta 2018 Cultural Competition to attend the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Since then, she represented Malta as the 2022 Fellow for the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship at Purdue University, served as the Maltese Changemaker for the EYCA Morein24 campaign, and joined a biological research expedition in Mexico with Operation Wallacea. A Gold Award Holder of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award, Cara has also been recognised among the Top 5 candidates from the EMAS region and delivered her first TEDx Talk at age 19.

As Malta’s United Nations Youth Delegate (2023-2025), Cara has actively participated in high-level multilateral conferences in New York, Geneva, and Azerbaijan, including the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68), the ECOSOC Youth Forum, the Human Rights Council (HRC58), COP29, and High-Level Political Forums (HLPF), where she presented the Youth Chapter of Malta’s Second Voluntary National Review in July 2025. Through these engagements, she has worked on thematic areas such as gender equality, sustainable development, intergenerational cooperation, and human rights.

Cara is one of 100 young global leaders selected from a pool of 8,500 applicants for the Youth Leader Fund for a World Without Nuclear Weapons under the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, where she focuses on disarmament, non-proliferation, and peacebuilding through the art of storytelling. She is also a member of the ESDN Youth Network and was the first Maltese participant selected for its annual meeting in Berlin. Additionally, she served as a youth representative contributing to negotiations for a European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) legal opinion on “How to ensure green skills and promote green vocational institutions.”

Her dedication has been recognised through different awards, including the Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) Award in 2023, the FreeHour International Impact Youth Award in 2024, and the Youth Leadership Sustainable Development Action Award in 2025. She was also nominated for the Ġieħ is-Swieqi Award in 2025.