Chernor Bah, a native of Sierra Leone, was appointed Minister of Information and Civic Education of Sierra Leone in July 2023. He is the co-Founder and former CEO of Purposeful, an organization that supports girls and their allies to spark and sustain movements for change in the developing world, an associate of the Population Council, a member of the International Jury of UNESCO's GWEPrize for Girls and Women's Education, a member of the Board of Together for Girls, and Chairperson of the Youth Advocacy Group, Global Education First Initiative, an initiative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Chernor is chair of the board of directors of the Auradicals Foundation for Democracy and Human Rights and has recently served on the advisory boards of the Kroc Institute and of UNICEF's Strategic Advisory on New Gender Policy and Action Plan. Chernor will be honored with the Kroc Institute's Distinguished Alumni award in September 2024, and will serve as this year's keynote speaker for the Institute's annual International Day of Peace lecture.
As a child Chernor faced displacement from Sierra Leone many times during the country's brutal 11-year civil war. At the end of the war, at age 15, he founded and led the Children's Forum Network, a mass movement of children who organized and mobilized to demand their voices be included in peace and reconciliation efforts, and was invited to present a report on the experience of Sierra Leonean children to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2002. Decades later, a new generation of Children’s Forum Network members still gather across the country every week, a testament to the power of youth voices and an enduring reminder of what mass civic mobilization can achieve.
Since then Chernor has worked with youth in Liberia, Lebanon, Haiti, Uganda and other emergency settings, leading efforts to strengthen youth voices in development and policy processes. Chernor also has worked for the UN Mission in Sierra Leone, as executive producer for a UN-sponsored children's radio program and as a UN youth advisor in New York and Liberia.
"Growing up in Sierra Leone, I saw first-hand the effects of youth exclusion," Chernor says. "This led not only to a period of war defined by unspeakable violence, but also of lost opportunities, including high illiteracy, high unemployment, and extreme poverty.
"There is hardly a more sure way to 'plan for poverty' than to fail to empower young people or to work with us to build a future that we will own," he says. "I'm passionate about using my story to inspire others and to influence policy and action for youth empowerment."
In February 2020 Chernor spoke at the United Nations, making an informed case on behalf of girls and young women in Sierra Leone, and asking the world to invest in girls as the heart and soul of peace building. “We need a feminist radical overthrow of power structures to create true peace" he said, "and girls must be at the center."
Chernor has twice been appointed by the United Nations Secretary General to high level steering committees, and is an Expert Advisor to the Security Council on Youth Peace and Security. In 2018, he was appointed by the UNICEF Executive Director to the International Task Force on Workplace Gender Discrimination and Harassment.
Chernor has spoken at the White House under President Obama, introduced the First Lady at the UN General Assembly, spoken at the European Union, African Union and the World Bank, and lectured at universities around the world.
In 2014, Chernor was honored by the Women's Refugee Commission in New York as a recipient of the "Voices of Courage'' award, which honors former refugees who have made significant impacts in their communities and served as examples of perseverance, strength, and hope. He was also awarded the Giraffe Heroes Award for his work as a global advocate for human rights and education, and for his brave work combating the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, and the 2016 "16 Heroes Award" from Safe Magazine, recognizing global leaders working to eradicate violence, particularly against girls and women.
Chernor previously served as a brand manager at the Nike Foundation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working to enhance the girl effect, to inspire girls and change hearts and minds about the value of girls in society. In 2012, he co-founded, alongside Gordon Brown (former British Prime Minister), A World at School – a global mobilization for acccess to education.
Prior to pursuing a Master's Degree in International Peace Studies at Notre Dame, Chernor earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Fourah Bay College at the University of Sierra Leone. For his Kroc Institute graduate internship, Chernor worked with Catholic Relief Services in Mindanao in the Philippines.
"Before arriving at the Kroc Institute, I had lived through a brutal conflict and I was increasingly cynical about human nature," Chernor says. "My studies helped me better understand the reasons for violent conflict and injustice and gave me the tools to understand and contribute to a more peaceful and equitable world. I can only hope this is what I will spend every day of my life working towards."