Date: March 18, 2026
REQUEST FOR QUOTATION
RFQ Nº UNFPA/IND/RFQ/26/005
Dear Sir/Madam,
UNFPA hereby solicits a quotation for the following service:
“Study on the Intersection of Megatrends and Child Marriage: Emerging Drivers, Implications and Pathways Forward ”
UNFPA India invites proposals from qualified research agencies, think tanks or consortia to undertake a rigorous study on the intersection between megatrends and child marriage, with a particular focus on identifying megatrends that are functioning as new and emerging drivers of child marriage in India, and on convening expert knowledge to identify implications, good practices and pathways forward.
I. About UNFPA
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is an international development agency that works to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every child birth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
UNFPA is the lead UN agency that expands the possibilities for women and young people to lead healthy sexual and reproductive lives. To read more about UNFPA, please go to:UNFPAaboutus
Terms of Reference (ToR)
1. Background and Rationale
Child marriage remains a pervasive human rights violation, with profound consequences for girls' education, health, economic empowerment and agency. Despite significant policy commitments and programmatic investments over the past two decades, child marriage persists as a deeply embedded practice in many parts of India, sustained by intersecting structural inequalities rooted in gender, caste, religion, poverty and social norms.
In India, according to the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5, 2019-21), approximately 23 percent of women aged 20-24 were married before age 18 — a figure that masks significant subnational and socio-economic disparities. In states such as West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Tripura, prevalence rates remain alarmingly high, and progress has been uneven.
A new and urgent dimension is emerging: the intersection between large-scale structural shifts — commonly referred to as megatrends — and the drivers of child marriage. Megatrends are macro-level forces of transformation that shape societies, economies and environments over the long term. These include climate change and its cascading impacts, large-scale migration and displacement, rapid urbanization and the informalization of urban economies, digital transformation, demographic transitions, and evolving conflict and fragility landscapes. While megatrends are not new phenomena, their pace, scale and interaction effects are intensifying in ways that are creating new and compounding risks for girls and adolescents — risks that are inadequately understood and insufficiently integrated into child marriage programming and policy in India.
For instance, extreme weather events linked to climate change — including floods, droughts and cyclones — are eroding household economic resilience, disrupting schooling and increasing displacement. In contexts where child marriage is used as a coping or risk-management strategy, these shocks can accelerate decisions to marry daughters early. Similarly, rural-to-urban migration is reshaping family structures and community-level protective norms, while urbanization creates new but poorly understood vulnerabilities for adolescent girls in informal settlements. The COVID-19 pandemic offered a stark illustration of how crisis conditions can rapidly intensify risk: school closures, economic distress and reduced access to services led to a documented or projected spike in child marriages in several Indian states.
Despite growing evidence of these connections, there remains a significant gap in systematic, contextually grounded analysis of how specific megatrends are operating as new and emerging drivers of child marriage in India. There is similarly limited documentation of what programmatic and policy responses are effectively addressing these emerging risks, or of how civil society, activists and communities are innovating at the intersection of these challenges.
UNFPA India, as the lead UN agency mandated to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender equality, is committed to generating robust evidence on these emerging dynamics and supporting evidence-informed advocacy and programming. In this context, UNFPA India invites proposals from qualified research agencies, think tanks or consortia to undertake a rigorous study on the intersection between megatrends and child marriage, with a particular focus on identifying megatrends that are functioning as new and emerging drivers of child marriage in India, and on convening expert knowledge to identify implications, good practices and pathways forward.
2.Objective
The study has the following primary objectives:
- To identify, analyse and prioritise megatrends that are proving to be new and emerging drivers of child marriage in India, with attention to how these trends operate differently across geographies, socio-economic groups, age cohorts and other axes of vulnerability.
- To examine the pathways and mechanisms through which selected megatrends amplify or create conditions conducive to child marriage, drawing on existing literature, data and evidence.
- To convene a structured multi-stakeholder expert consultation — including civil society organisations, grassroots activists, survivor advocates, researchers and policymakers — to deliberate on the implications of megatrend-driven child marriage risks, share good practices and assess the applicability and scalability of promising models.
- To identify and document good practices, innovative approaches and intervention models that are demonstrably effective or promising in addressing the child marriage risks associated with megatrends.
- To develop a high-quality technical brief or policy paper that synthesises the evidence, expert perspectives, good practices and a forward-looking set of recommendations for policy, programming and advocacy.
Instructions for submission
Proposals should be prepared based on the guidelines set forth in Section III above, along with a properly filled out and signed price quotation form, and are to be sent by email to the contact person indicated below no later than : 31st March 2026, till 23:59 Hrs
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Name of contact person at UNFPA:
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Bids India
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Email address of contact person:
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For detailed information, please check the complete version of the RFP attached below.