The New Protest Playbook: How Gen Z Is Challenging Power

On the afternoon of August 5, 2024, Bangladesh's political order unravelled with remarkable speed. What had begun weeks earlier as student demonstrations against the reinstatement of quotas in government jobs had evolved into a nationwide movement demanding accountability, political reform and the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

As violence escalated and security forces struggled to contain the unrest, Hasina left the country, bringing an end to more than 15 years in power. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the crackdown on protesters widened rather than suppressed public dissent, drawing in citizens far beyond the original student movement.

Bangladesh was not an isolated case.

Two years earlier, thousands of young Sri Lankans had occupied Colombo's Galle Face Green as the country descended into its worst economic crisis since independence.

The protest site, known as GotaGoGama, became the symbol of a nationwide movement that culminated in President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing the country and resigning. Weeks after Bangladesh's upheaval, Kenya witnessed another wave of youth-led mobilisation as Gen Z protesters forced President William Ruto to withdraw the deeply unpopular Finance Bill after days of nationwide demonstrations.

Elsewhere, in Iran, Myanmar and Serbia, youth have remained at the forefront of sustained campaigns against governments, even where those movements have not produced leadership change.

Bangladesh's protests emerged from a dispute over public-sector jobs. Sri Lanka's movement was born out of economic collapse. Kenya's demonstrations centred on tax increases. Iran's Woman, Life, Freedom movement was triggered by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody, while Myanmar's youth entered mass resistance after the military seized power in a coup.

Yet despite their different origins, these movements reveal a strikingly similar pattern.

Across the globe, young people are increasingly organising outside traditional political parties and civil society structures. They are using digital platforms not simply to communicate, but to coordinate logistics, document state action, raise funds, challenge official narratives and sustain protest movements without relying on established leaders.

Their demands vary, from jobs and economic security to democratic freedoms and accountability, but they are united by a profound distrust of political elites and institutions they believe have failed their generation.

Not every youth-led movement has toppled a government. Many have been violently suppressed. Others have achieved only limited policy concessions. In several cases, however, sustained mobilisation has coincided with the resignation of national leaders or forced governments into politically costly retreats.

Why This Generation Is Different

For the generation that came of age in the 2020s, it has been a succession of overlapping crises. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education, delayed entry into the workforce and widened economic inequalities. As countries emerged from lockdowns, soaring inflation, stagnant wages and rising living costs deepened anxieties among young people already facing uncertain employment prospects.

In many countries, economic hardship was compounded by corruption scandals, declining public services and a growing perception that political elites were insulated from the consequences of their decisions.

In Sri Lanka, years of economic mismanagement culminated in a financial collapse that left the country struggling to import fuel, food and medicine. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka's Annual Report 2022 documents the scale of the crisis, from the depletion of foreign exchange reserves to soaring inflation and a sharp contraction in economic activity.

The economic emergency transformed what began as scattered public anger into a nationwide movement that drew students, young professionals and first-time protesters into the streets.

Bangladesh followed a different path as immediate catalyst was the reinstatement of quotas in government recruitment, a decision that many students believed undermined merit-based opportunities.

Yet the OHCHR's assessment of the 2024 protests notes that demonstrations quickly expanded beyond the quota issue, showing broader concerns about governance, accountability and political freedoms. A dispute over public-sector jobs became a vehicle for expressing years of accumulated frustration.

Kenya's protests, too, began with a specific policy proposal. The Finance Bill 2024 introduced new taxes as households grappled with rising living costs. Young Kenyans, many of whom had never participated in organised politics, became the face of a movement that argued the economic burden was falling disproportionately on ordinary citizens while political leaders remained disconnected from everyday realities.

Notably, unlike earlier protest waves, which were often organised through unions, student federations or political organisations, many of the recent youth movements deliberately rejected formal leadership. Protesters frequently insisted they were not campaigning for another political party or aspiring leader. Their demands focused instead on transparency, accountability and systemic change.

Interestingly, social media platforms became more than tools for sharing information, they evolved into the infrastructure of protest itself. Messaging applications enabled organisers to change meeting points in real time, coordinate legal assistance, raise emergency funds and circulate verified information when official narratives were contested.

Livestreams, short-form videos and citizen journalism also ensured that local demonstrations could attract international attention within hours, increasing scrutiny of government responses.

This decentralised model has made youth-led movements more resilient. Without a single leader to arrest or a headquarters to dismantle, authorities have often struggled to disrupt them using traditional methods. At the same time, the absence of formal leadership has made it harder for governments to negotiate with protesters or channel public anger into conventional political processes.

The result is a new form of civic mobilisation, highly networked, digitally native and often issue-driven rather than ideologically defined. Whether campaigning against economic hardship, corruption, restrictions on civil liberties or abuses of state power, these movements reflect a generation that increasingly sees political participation as something organised collectively and horizontally, rather than mediated through established institutions.

That shift is perhaps the most significant common thread linking the protests from Colombo to Dhaka, Nairobi to Tehran. The slogans changed. The grievances differed. But the generation driving them shared a common belief: if existing institutions were unwilling to respond, they would build movements capable of forcing them to.

When Youth Movements Change Governments

History suggests that protests alone rarely bring down governments. Even the largest demonstrations can fade if those in power retain control of state institutions, enjoy the backing of security forces and weather public anger long enough for momentum to dissipate.

The youth-led movements of the past five years reinforce that lesson. Their greatest success has not been the ability to mobilise millions of people, young people have done that before, but the ability, in a handful of cases, to exploit moments when governments were already vulnerable.

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh stand out because youth mobilisation converged with deeper political and economic crises.

In Sri Lanka, the Aragalaya movement emerged against the backdrop of an economy in freefall. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka's Annual Report 2022 documents an unprecedented financial collapse: foreign exchange reserves had been depleted, inflation surged, essential imports became scarce and daily life was marked by fuel queues, rolling blackouts and shortages of food and medicine.

As public frustration mounted, Galle Face Green in Colombo became the epicentre of a movement that united students, professionals, trade unions, artists and ordinary citizens.

The occupation of the protest site was not, by itself, what forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from office. Rather, it was the culmination of months in which economic collapse eroded the government's authority, political allies began distancing themselves from the administration and public confidence evaporated. Human rights organisations later documented how emergency regulations, arrests and restrictions on peaceful assembly failed to restore legitimacy to a government that had already lost public trust.

In Bangladesh, the OHCHR's investigation concluded that the authorities' use of excessive force and sweeping restrictions, including curfews and internet shutdowns, did not suppress the movement. Instead, the crackdown broadened participation and intensified domestic and international scrutiny.

By early August 2024, Sheikh Hasina resigned and left the country, leading to the formation of an interim government under Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. These cases illustrate an important distinction. Youth movements may provide the momentum for political change, but they rarely act alone.

Leadership transitions tend to occur when several pressures converge: sustained public mobilisation, weakening economic conditions, fractures within the political establishment and limits on the state's ability, or willingness, to rely indefinitely on coercion.

Kenya demonstrates that success need not always be measured by regime change.

The country's Gen Z protests in June 2024 were triggered by the Finance Bill, which proposed a series of tax increases amid widespread concern over the rising cost of living. Within days, demonstrations had spread across the country, fuelled by decentralised online organising and the absence of a single leadership structure. Although security forces responded with force, the political outcome was markedly different from Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. President William Ruto remained in office, but he withdrew the Finance Bill after nationwide pressure made its passage politically untenable.

In Iran, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement became one of the most sustained challenges to the Islamic Republic in decades. In Myanmar, students and young professionals formed the backbone of resistance following the 2021 military coup.

Is India Entering Its Own Youth Politics Moment?

The global wave of youth-led protests offers another insight. It suggests that the biggest political shift of the past five years is not simply that young people are protesting more, it is that they are increasingly doing so outside the structures that traditionally mediated public dissent.

That pattern is beginning to surface in India.

The recent protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) over the alleged NEET-UG paper leak did not begin as an opposition campaign. They emerged from widespread frustration among students over the credibility of one of the country's most consequential examinations. What started as a demand for accountability in the education system gradually evolved into a broader youth mobilisation that drew thousands to Delhi's Jantar Mantar and culminated in the 'Sansad Chalo' march towards Parliament.

Much like the movements seen in Bangladesh and Kenya, the protest was organised primarily through digital networks rather than established political organisations. Outlook India's reporting found that many participants were first-time protesters who had discovered the movement through Instagram, YouTube, X and online student communities rather than party cadres or campus unions.

The movement's organisers deliberately projected themselves as a platform representing students rather than a conventional political formation, even as opposition parties later extended their support.

Across countries, youth movements are increasingly setting the political agenda before political parties do. They identify issues, frame the public debate and force governments and opposition parties alike to respond. Political parties are no longer always the architects of mass mobilisation; increasingly, they are becoming its followers.

Whether in Colombo, Dhaka, Nairobi or New Delhi, that redistribution of political agenda-setting power may prove to be the defining democratic shift of this decade.