A Gen Z Revolution: Nepal's Youth Protest Against Corruption

A demonstration in Kathmandu on 8 September 2025 ©AFP - PRABIN RANABHAT

On the 8th of September, a call to action on a discord server had college and university students take to the streets in Nepal in a nationwide protest movement. A revolution against a government flaunting its wealth and corruption online ensued. 

Thousands of students and young adults were reportedly protesting the social media ban across the country (Beech and Loke, 2025) when what started as a peaceful demonstration spiralled  out of control. 19 students were shot dead by police over the course of the day, the youngest being a 12-year-old student still in school uniform, sparking outrage across the country (Nepal, Shrestha, and Lamsal, 2025). As the protest further devolved to violence, looters and chaos throughout the next day, the crowds in Kathmandu organised themselves and began to set alight to Nepal's Parliament, official government buildings and high-ranking politician's residences. By the end of the day these major symbols of a democratic nation became scorched rubble.  

The protest was organised through online communities in Discord, mainly the Hami Nepal Server ,formerly a non-governmental organisation focusing on earthquake relief. It then served as the central organisational hub of the movement, paving the way for a decentralised, leaderless youth Revolution of Nepal (Tiwari, 2025).

The news of the revolution turning sour was received with grief on an international level as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an investigation into the 'disproportionate use force" by the Police (OHCHR, 2025). Nepalese clinical staff implored the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the violations against children and health care personnel when a smoke bomb was thrown into a hospital by police (Nepal, Shrestha, and Lamsal, 2025). In reaction to the full-scale revolt that toppled the government, Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli resigned on the evening of 9th September in an attempt to placate the protesters. 

As the world reacted to the conflict, Nepal's Army Chief Ashok Raj Sigdel called for the self-proclaimed 'Gen Z Protesters' (Beech and Loke, 2025) to open a dialogue towards peace talks, and to put forward a new name for interim political leadership of the country. 

The discord server was abuzz, as the Hami Nepal server organisers (known as discord moderators) facilitated a debate forum between nearly 100,000 users on the social media platform, inadvertently becoming the democratic heart of Nepal (Baskar, 2025). The next day a vote on the server determined the new Prime Minister of Nepal, selecting former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, as the name to be put forward to the Military. 

By the end of the protests, 72 people had died as a result of the conflict (Sharma, 2025) and the nation’s social and political infrastructure was in shambles. However, the hope of a new, more transparent and accountable government was a possibility for the citizens of Nepal. 

This political movement was, at its core, about the longstanding corruption of government officials in Nepal’s recent history. The social media ban of 26 platforms only served as the catalyst for the nationwide demonstrations and destruction. Protesters claim the ban was in reaction to the anger that highlighted politician's children flaunting their overconsumption and wealth online - the so-called ‘Nepo Kids’ of Nepal, claiming that corrupt officials aimed to silence civic disapproval of the government's demoralisation with the ban. 

The Gen Z population of Nepal’s reaction was to use the very resource that had been cut off from them with VPNs (Baskar, 2025), creating an inertia of youth political action with the concept of decentralised civil disobedience at its heart. 

“Students are rarely on the wrong side of history” is a claim most political historians will make and in the case of the Nepalese student and youth population, the evidence falls in favour of its truth. At surface level, a student-led political uprising about a social media ban was fundamentally about the longstanding decades of corruption in government. But the enormous costs of the revolution’s violence will also be reflected alongside it in Nepalese history for years to come. 

Reference list

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Baskar, P. (2025). Nepal’s Social Media Ban Backfires as Citizens Nominate New Leader in Chat Room. The New York Times. [online] 11 Sep. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/world/asia/nepal-protest-genz-discord.html. [Accessed 4 November 2025]

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