GEN Z PROTESTS: NEW RESISTANCE RISES
- Young people are leading a new wave of civil society in resistance to unaccountable economic and political power. Protest uprisings are being driven by collective anger at economic hardship, lack of opportunities and corrupt and out-of-touch elites. Recent trigger events include electricity and water cuts in Madagascar, a social media ban in Nepal and useless flood control projects in the Philippines.
- Gen Z protesters are mobilising with remarkable resilience and innovation, taking decentralised approaches to organising that enable collective leadership, making strategic use of social media platforms and sharing tactics internationally to achieve tangible victories. Governments quit in Bulgaria, Madagascar and Nepal, and had to reverse unpopular policies in Indonesia and Timor-Leste.
- Violence has been the prevailing state response to Gen Z-led protests, including beatings, lethal force, mass arrests and torture. But repression has sometimes proved counterproductive, intensifying movements rather than suppressing them, as seen in Indonesia, Madagascar and Nepal.
In numerous countries, people from Generation Z have risen up in mass protests. This isn’t the first time young people have taken to the streets, and Gen Z-led protests aren’t the only mass mobilisations of these times, as shown by recent protests against corruption in Angola, Immigration, Customs and Enforcement agency violence in the USA and the theocratic regime in Iran – a broad movement with extensive Gen Z involvement. But across very different countries there are striking commonalities in Gen Z resistance to unaccountable economic and political power, offering compelling evidence that a new civic generation is finding its voice.
Gen Z-led protests have recently mobilised across a wide range of countries, including Bulgaria, Greece, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, North Macedonia, Philippines, Serbia, Peru, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo and Turkey.
Gen Z’s anger has built up over time, with protests typically triggered when governments impose a new policy that adversely impacts young people or exposes how out of touch they are. In Nepal, it was the government’s banning of 26 social media platforms, a move seemingly made because young people used social media to mock the lavish lifestyles of politicians’ children. The Bulgarian government tried to pass a budget with increased social security contributions and taxes, crystallising concerns about its undemocratic decision-making. Parliament in Peru approved pension system changes, mandating contributions from the age of 18. In Indonesia and Timor-Leste, politicians approved generous benefits for themselves: allowance increases in Indonesia and luxury cars in Timor-Leste.
Young protesters march outside the Parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal on 8 September 2025 to demand the lifting of a social media ban and an end to corruption. Photo by Prabin Ranabhat/AFP.
The trigger can be a disaster that exposes systemic corruption. Severe storms in the Philippines made it impossible to ignore how useless many flood control projects were, despite vast sums supposedly spent on them. In Serbia, the collapse of a railway station canopy in November 2024, causing 16 deaths, triggered ongoing anger at corruption. In North Macedonia, it was the loss of 59 young lives in a nightclub fire. In Morocco, when eight women died in childbirth at a single hospital in under three weeks, it laid bare the failure of essential services against the backdrop of an expensive new stadium built for the World Cup. Madagascar’s protests arose when electricity and water cuts became unbearable.
In some countries, protests expressed fundamental democratic demands denied by those in power, rising in response to a blatantly undemocratic election in Tanzania, manoeuvres to extend dynastic rule in Togo and the arrest of the Mayor of Istanbul, the opposition frontrunner in the presidential race, in Turkey.
Young Tanzanians living in South Africa denounce Tanzania’s election results in Cape Town, South Africa, on 5 November 2025. Photo by Rodger Bosch/AFP.
Several common protests triggers emerge across diverse contexts. Many countries where people have protested have large youth populations, and economies are failing them. Young people are well educated but unemployment is high, the cost of essentials has soared and poor public services have deteriorated further. Economic inequality is growing and prospects of social mobility have receded.
Economic and political elites overlap, and many young people are angry with out-of-touch and manifestly self-serving politicians, the flaunting of elite wealth and highly visible corruption. In some countries – including several in Africa – a generational gulf between national leaders and Gen Z deepens the disconnect.
Many Gen Z-led movements are making economically populist and redistributive demands, seeking curbs on elite wealth, investment that creates jobs, spending on education and health and an end to corruption.
Gen Z protesters are showing remarkable resilience. In Serbia, they’ve sustained protests for over a year, modelling new ways of working and enabling people to develop participation and organisation skills that could underpin a lifetime of activism. Greece’s movement, formed after a train crash that killed 57 people in 2023, continues to mobilise, returning to the streets on the 2025 anniversary.
Direct democracy has been a guiding principle in Serbia, where the movement organised open student assemblies, followed by citizen assemblies in cities and towns. Morocco’s Gen Z 212 movement is purposefully decentralised and horizontal. But this doesn’t mean movements are leaderless; they have many leaders.
Social media plays a central role in how Gen Z-led movements communicate, coordinate and make decisions, with people using VPNs and low-key platforms to circumvent restrictions. Discord, originally an app for gamers, was a key tool in Nepal, subsequently adopted by movements in Madagascar and Morocco. While Discord isn’t immune from social media problems such as hate speech, it offers relative anonymity, isn’t associated with right-wing tech oligarchs and tends to face less government restriction. In the Philippines, Reddit was a key platform where people exposed the lifestyles of corrupt elites. Gen Z isn’t going to abandon social media, but activists are making strategic choices about which platforms they use and how they use them.
Young protesters gather in front of the parliament building in Rabat, Morocco on 18 October 2025 to demand education and healthcare reform. Photo by Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP
In Nepal, the movement used Discord for a groundbreaking exercise in democracy after the prime minister fled: 10,000 people in Nepal and among the diaspora used the platform to debate and choose a favoured candidate to serve as interim prime minister, who went on to take the role. Morocco’s Gen Z movement used Discord to vote on its next actions, produced daily podcasts and held open meetings, shared on YouTube, to spread awareness of protest rights and non-violent strategies. The movement’s online democracy enabled young women to play leading roles.
Technology enables rapid international sharing of inspiration. When social media first rose to prominence in a protest context, during the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, connections across the Middle East and North Africa were aided by a shared language and relatively similar political regimes. Now, global connections are being made between movements using different languages in diverse contexts, with video content and AI-assisted translation a crucial factor.
Movements around the world openly acknowledge the inspiration they’ve taken from Nepal and other mobilisations that preceded theirs. Protesters in Madagascar signed up to Nepal’s Discord communities to learn about their tactics and challenges. Movements share symbols, notably from the One Piece manga, whose skull-and-straw-hat flag has been flown at protests from Nepal onwards.
Actions are distinctly Gen Z in style, making creative use of memes and mockery, along with symbolic and attention-grabbing actions. In Serbia, protesters cycled and ran to Brussels and Strasbourg to call for the European Union to pay attention, and held a symbolic 16-day walk – one day for each person killed in the railway station disaster.
Gen Z-led protest movements largely form outside existing structures, in some cases resisting co-optation attempts by opposition parties. They often draw support across party lines and divisions of ethnicity, gender and social class, as seen in North Macedonia. Some spread beyond their Gen Z instigators: in the Philippines, church groups, farmers, healthcare workers and teachers marched alongside young protesters.
Established civil society groups can play supporting roles. Serbia’s movement built its own structures and mobilised voluntary support, including food donations, but also found allies in existing groups that assisted with logistics and helped detainees. In Indonesia, established civil society groups provided legal support to detained protesters, set up an initiative to investigate protest violence and helped develop a public list of demands. In Morocco, they documented protest rights violations. These intergenerational collaborations show the potential for emerging and established civil society to work with and learn from each other.
In some instances, protests have brought immediate results. Indonesia’s parliament dropped the new allowances and began dialogue with student leaders, while political parties dismissed several politicians singled out by protesters. The Moroccan government agreed to increase education and health budgets. In Timor-Leste, the government scrapped free cars for parliamentarians and abolished lifetime pensions for former politicians, a long-running activist demand.
Initial concessions often didn’t satisfy protesters. In Nepal, the government’s reversal of its social media ban wasn’t enough: protests continued until the prime minister quit and fled. In Madagascar, President Andry Rajoelina repeatedly gave ground, sacking the government and convening a national dialogue, but protesters persisted until the army switched sides and forced him out. The Bulgarian government withdrew its budget, but tens of thousands protested until the government resigned.
The mother of a slain protester holds a portrait of her son at a civil society rally in Antananarivo, Madagascar on 13 October 2025. Photo by Luis Tato/AFP.
In many cases, authoritarian governments refused to concede any demands. And in almost all countries – whether governments gave ground or not – the common state response was violence. In Tanzania, police fired live ammunition at crowds protesting against the blatantly undemocratic election, killing hundreds, while hundreds more were charged with treason. In Togo’s protests, security forces killed at least seven people. In Turkey, police responded to protests with widespread arrests, beatings, projectiles fired at close range, pepper spray and tear gas.
State violence reflects the threat Gen Z-led protests pose to established economic and political power. It tends to be fiercest where protesters demand democracy, entailing a fundamental redistribution of power. Before they switched sides and refused to fire on protesters, Madagascar’s security forces used live ammunition, fuelling a spiral of violence that killed at least 22 people. When protesters broke into Nepal’s parliamentary complex, police used military-grade ammunition, shooting people in the head. As is often the case, lethal responses failed to quell protests, instead recruiting more people who felt their country’s future was at stake.
Even where protest demands are more limited, state violence is the default. In Indonesia, authorities deployed military forces when police lost control amid the violence that spiralled when a young man was run over and killed by an armed vehicle. In Timor-Leste, police fired at protesters. Police violence caused many injuries in Morocco. In Peru, police used drones, laser lights and tear gas. In Serbia, they deployed a sonic weapon. Police in the Philippines beat, humiliated and psychologically tortured protesters in custody.
Context and history offer reasons for caution. When Gen Z-led protests arose in Kenya in 2024, triggered by a tax increase, the state unleashed lethal violence after protesters demanded deeper political reforms. The protests they inspired in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda faced the same treatment, as did further Gen Z-led mobilisations against Kenyan police brutality in 2025. The price of protesting is high, and it’s unreasonable to expect young people to keep paying it.
Protesters gather at Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 19 December 2025 to demand justice for assassinated young protest leader Sharif Osman Hadi. Photo by Abdul Goni / AFP
Gen Z anger isn’t confined to countries where protests have erupted. Young people are expressing frustration wherever economies and politics fail them. But anger doesn’t automatically spark progressive demands. In several European countries – including Germany, Poland and Romania – many young people have recently voted for right-wing populist and nationalist politicians who position themselves as anti-elite and speak to an appetite for some kind of change. The challenge for progressive movements is to channel anger towards alternatives that respect human rights and serve social justice, punching up at elites rather than down at targets such as LGBTQI+ people and migrants.
A further challenge awaits movements that succeed, of sustaining momentum when opportunities open up but political rivals jostle for power. The experience of Bangladesh, where a Gen Z-led movement ousted an authoritarian government in 2024, shows that meaningful change takes time. The party that formed out of the protest movement won only a handful of seats in the February 2026 election. Repressive laws and economic stagnation often outlast the governments that oversaw them.
But Gen Z anger isn’t going away. There are 80 countries with a median age of under 30. When governments heap further failure upon simmering economic and political grievances, more protests will follow.
For established civil society groups, the challenge is to support Gen Z-led resistance while respecting the autonomy and right to self-organise of emerging activists. For governments, the path is to listen, engage in real dialogue, commit to genuine change and, above all, respect the right to protest instead of meeting dissent with violence.