Shape Action: Join Us for the Global Thematic Consultation on Social Norms & Child Marriage to inform our Shared Global Research Agenda

PICTURED: During an in-person consultation in Nairobi, participants work to identify regional evidence gaps that will inform the Shared Global Research Agenda to Prevent and Respond to Child Marriage. Photo: © Nicholas Muyoma.

The details

In October, together with the UNFPA–UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage, UNICEF Innocenti, and WHO, we launched an interactive and inclusive consultation process designed to bring together diverse voices — across stakeholders, thematic areas, and geographic contexts — to help shape a shared global research agenda and identify the most pressing evidence gaps to accelerate action to end child marriage.

Consultations are taking place through a range of formats: facilitated discussions, online engagement platforms, and focus group sessions. Across national, regional, or global level, each consultation workshop creates space for child marriage actors to reflect on, discuss, and prioritise key evidence gaps most relevant to their contexts and work.

We are delighted to announce our Global Thematic Consultation focused on Social Norms and Community Engagement to Prevent and Respond to Child Marriage.

To ensure meaningful engagement participation will be capped at 100; for those unable to participate in this session, we will share an online platform to gather your evidence gaps on this theme.

In this interactive session, we will:

• Share a brief overview of the global evidence on Social Norms and Community Engagement centered interventions to help ground our dialogue in shared, evidence-informed insights.
• Identify the research gaps most relevant to our contexts and our work on ending child marriage.
• Collaboratively build consensus on evidence needs for norm-shifting interventions to end child marriage.

This consultation is an opportunity to discuss, debate, and share experiences related to social norms and community engagement, and to propose key research questions that will guide future evidence generation.

We warmly invite stakeholders across national, community, regional, and international levels — including academics; policymakers; representatives of multilateral organisations; programme practitioners and implementers; young people; research donors; advocates; service providers; and individuals affected by child marriage — to join us in this critical discussion.

Your participation in this session is essential to deepening clarity, fostering collaboration, and building consensus on priority research questions for this thematic area.