The Forces Behind Nepal’s Explosive Gen Z Protests

The protests in Nepal’s capital escalated as they went into a second day on Tuesday, as anger and disappointment that had built up for years among the protesters were ignited. The government’s ban on major social media platforms a few days earlier had only lit the fuse.

Declaring themselves to be the voice of Nepal’s Gen Z, the protesters were expressing not only outrage at the official violence that met them on the streets on Monday, but also at longstanding social problems that have afflicted Nepal during the 10 years since it replaced its monarchy with a democratic republic.

The country relies heavily on the remittances that an estimated two million workers abroad send home. The social media ban had the effect of isolating families from their faraway breadwinners.

The government repealed the ban on Tuesday after protests, and Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and other ministers later resigned. But the unrest continued, as protesters set fire to government offices and to politicians’ homes.

Unemployment and Inequity

The country’s biggest slow-burning crisis centers on jobs. Getting one is a herculean task in Nepal, a mountainous nation of 30 million sandwiched between India and China. According to the Nepal Living Standard Survey published by the National Statistics Office in 2024, the unemployment rate was 12.6 percent.

Those figures tend to understate the severity of the problem. They represent only participants in the formal economy, leaving out a majority of Nepalis, who work without officially reported jobs, mostly in farming. And the unemployment is heavily concentrated among younger adults.

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