Ronan Farrow (born December 19, 1987) is an American human rights activist, freelance journalist, Rhodes Scholar, lawyer and government official. He is currently serving in the Obama administration as Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Global Youth Issues and director of the State Department's Global Youth Issues office. He assumed his current role following two years as the State Department’s Special Adviser for Humanitarian and NGO Affairs in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. His writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and other publications, focused primarily on human rights issues in the Horn of Africa. He has appeared as a frequent commentator on major networks and as an expert witness before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. A graduate of Yale Law School, much of his work has focused on engagement with marginalized actors such as youth and women’s groups.

In recent public appearances, including a keynote address at Amnesty International's inaugural Global Youth Summit at UC Berkeley and a commencement address at Bard College at Simon's Rock, later selected by the Huffington Post as one of 2011's top ten commencement speeches, Farrow has emphasized his work with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to elevate youth engagement in US foreign policy, leading a US government taskforce on the same subject.

In 2008, Farrow was awarded Refugees International's McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award, for "extraordinary service to refugees and displaced people." In 2009, he was named by New York Magazine as their "New Activist" of the year and included on its list of individuals "on the verge of changing their worlds”. In 2010, Harper’s Bazaar named him their “up-and-coming politician" of the year.

In 2011, he was named one of the top 99 most influential young professionals under 33 years old in foreign policy by The Diplomatic Courier. On November 19, 2011, he was named a Rhodes Scholar-elect for 2012.