LRPS_2026_9206688 Development of Design Options for a Baby Bonds Pilot as Part of an Integrated Social Protection Framework for Children and Families in Ukraine (international)

UNICEF has now issued a Request for Proposals in order to select a supplier for development of Design Options for a Baby Bonds Pilot as Part of an Integrated Social Protection Framework for Children and Families in Ukraine (international) Ukraine has a comprehensive social protection system that combines universal benefits, poverty targeted programmes, tax financed social assistance, and insurance based schemes to support individuals and households across the life cycle. Programmes supporting children and families including family benefits, targeted social assistance, social services, and contributory social insurance play a central role in mitigating poverty risks and promoting human capital development. At the same time, Ukraine faces persistent challenges related to child poverty, inequality of opportunity, and the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. These structural challenges have been significantly exacerbated by Russia’s full scale invasion, which has resulted in large scale displacement, income loss, increased care burdens, and disruption of access to essential services for children and families. The war has also placed severe and prolonged pressure on public finances, constraining fiscal space amid rising defence expenditures, increased social needs, and reliance on external financing for core government functions. As a result, any new or expanded social protection intervention must be carefully assessed for fiscal sustainability, cost effectiveness, and its ability to complement existing programmes. Within this constrained fiscal environment, there is growing interest in strengthening social investment approaches that can deliver long term returns by improving life chances from early childhood, rather than solely expanding short term income support. In this context, baby bonds and adjacent start of life asset building instruments are being explored as a potential complementary policy tool. Such instruments may provide children with an initial or recurring asset endowment from birth or in early life, which becomes accessible later—often in adolescence or early adulthood—to support education, housing, entrepreneurship, or other productive investments. Importantly, baby bonds are not envisaged as a stand alone intervention or a substitute for existing child and family focused programmes. Rather, they would represent one component within a broader framework of universal, poverty targeted, tax financed, and insurance financed social protection programmes designed to support children and families across different stages of vulnerability and risk. Any consideration of such instruments in Ukraine must therefore be grounded in a clear understanding of fiscal constraints, institutional capacity, legal and regulatory feasibility, and alignment with ongoing social protection reform, recovery planning, and longer term development objectives. This assignment seeks to provide an evidence based foundation for such an assessment, drawing on international experience while anchoring analysis firmly in Ukraine’s current fiscal, policy, and institutional realities. This tender will be run through the UNICEF e-submissions system. By clicking on the blue ‘Express Interest’ button in the UNGM tender notice, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document (including instructions on how to access the tender documents and submit an Offer) will be automatically emailed to the ‘contact persons’ included in your UNGM registration. Alternatively, the full UNICEF e-submission system instructions to bidders document is publicly available on the UNICEF supply internet pages here: https://www.unicef.org/supply/index_procurement_policies.html . In the tender management site, if you navigate to the documents tab and opt in to confirm your intention to submit a Bid – you will then see the mandatory placeholders for documents that must be attached prior to submitting your Offer (you will also see if there are any mandatory questionnaires to complete). As such, you are recommended to `opt in` well before the submission deadline so you are clear exactly what documents are required to be uploaded prior to completing your submission. Please note that in order to access the tender documentation through UNICEF’s e-submissions system, vendors must: (i) be registered with UNICEF in UNGM as a company/NGO; (ii) have successfully completed all mandatory information currently required by UNGM when registering. Please ensure that any files submitted as part of your Bid are not corrupt or damaged in any way. Please exercise particular caution when using compressed files. Any corrupt or damaged files may lead to your Bid being invalidated. All vendors are strongly recommended to regularly log in to the UNICEF e-submissions system to check for any deadline extensions, new clarifications, new correspondence or updated tender documents relating to this tender. Pre-bid conference: Pre-bid conference will be held online on 21 October 2026 15:00, Kyiv time. You can join the meeting using the following link: Microsoft Teams meeting Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3137545362298871?p=0QZuKAogYipMfJgWm0 Meeting ID: 313 754 536 229 887 1 Passcode: oP6cX6o6