INVESTIGATION

Resumption of $20bn Cabo Delgado gas project reignites both hope and resentment

The resumption of one of the world's biggest gas projects by French energy giant TotalEnergies, after a five-year suspension following a deadly jihadist attack, has raised hopes of jobs and prosperity in northern Mozambique. But this second instalment of Mozambique Exposed – an investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, to which RFI contributed – questions whether the country's vast gas wealth will benefit local communities.


Issued on: 12/06/2026 - RFI

The restarting of the world's largest gas field in northern Mozambique has brought both hope and concern. © Baptiste Condominas/RFI

It is barely 7am in the departure lounge at Pemba airport in northern Mozambique, on a day in early May. Around a dozen passengers sit quietly, some trying to recover from a short night's sleep.

Most are aid workers waiting for a United Nations-chartered flight to Mueda, Mocímboa da Praia or Palma, several hundred kilometres north of Pemba.

Suddenly, four heavily built men stand up. A pilot hands them unusual flat, brightly coloured life jackets. The group walks across the tarmac towards a helicopter.

"They're going to Afungi," one aid worker remarks. "A direct landing at the Total base."

A closed-off enclave

Afungi is a peninsula near the town of Palma in Mozambique's far north, in the Cabo Delgado province close to the border with Tanzania, whereTotalEnergies and its partners have established the Mozambique LNG (liquid natural gas) project.

The $20 billion project involves developing an offshore gas field in the Rovuma Basin and building facilities onshore to liquefy methane for export.

The reserves, estimated at 5,000 billion cubic metres, are among the largest ever discovered.

For this vast undertaking, TotalEnergies is being joined by several international partners, including three Indian oil companies, Japan's Mitsui and the Mozambican state, which holds a 15 percent stake.

The Afungi site covers 7,000 hectares behind perimeter fencing. At its centre is a paved airstrip surrounded by accommodation blocks and a maze of warehouses.

"Foreign companies isolate their workers. It does nothing for local development," says Abudo Gafuro, an activist with the human rights group Kundeleya.

Since 2017, Cabo Delgado has been gripped by an Islamist insurgency. Militants from the group Ansar al-Sunna (locally known as al-Shabaab), claim to be seeking to implement Sharia law and a new social order that would deliver a fairer distribution of wealth in the province.

According to the conflict-monitoring organisation Acled, more than 6,500 people have been killed, and a UN agency estimates at least 1 million people have been displaced.

TotalEnergies decided to suspend the Mozambique LNG project in 2020 due to security concerns. In April 2021 it officially announced the suspension after a series of deadly coordinated jihadist attacks. Work resumed only in January this year.

A map shows the position of Afungi in northern Mozambique. © Studio FMM

Mozambique relaunches TotalEnergies gas project after five-year pause
Compensation and frustration

Sitting beneath an acacia tree, José Cheila* looks exhausted. A few days earlier, he attended a community meeting on land issues.

"The Total representative didn't even turn up," says the Palma-based civil society co-ordinator.

For nearly a decade, compensation claims linked to the expropriation of hundreds of farmers and fishermen have remained unresolved.

In Mozambique, land belongs to the state – although collective, individual and customary land use rights are recognised. In 2012, the government granted a land use and benefit right, known as a DUAT, to the Texas-based company Anadarko, which discovered the Rovuma gas field.

TotalEnergies inherited the agreement when it took over the project in 2019. The deal provided for relocation housing, individual and collective financial compensation and material assistance, including motorcycles.

While Cheila deems the compensation package fair, many people are yet to receive what was promised.

"About 184 million meticais [roughly €2.5m] in compensation was planned in 2014, but some families are still waiting because the project was suspended," says Eduardo Caponde of the Cabo Delgado Community Development Forum.

The resumption of Mozambique LNG has boosted expectations.

"Discussions have restarted. But new questions have emerged," Caponde points out. "Is an amount agreed in 2014 still appropriate today, when the cost of living in Palma has changed so much?"

Contacted by the Forbidden Stories consortium, TotalEnergies said all 643 families affected by the project had been relocated to the village of Quitunda, a claim reporters confirmed during one of their visits.

"By the end of 2025, the land compensation activities foreseen in the resettlement plan had been completed," the company stated in an emailed response, adding that "livelihood restoration programmes" had also been implemented.

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, left, shakes hands with TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne at a meeting in Maputo, Mozambique on 3 February, 2023. Mozambican Presidency via AP

TotalEnergies faces pressure at AGM over war gains and fossil fuel plans

Fortress economy

Another source of frustration is the project's isolation from the surrounding economy.

In September 2025, TotalEnergies signed a memorandum of understanding with Mozambique's Northern Integrated Development Agency (ADIN).

The €8.5m programme is intended to fund job creation and income-generating projects in the districts of Palma and Mocímboa da Praia, but many residents remain unconvinced.

"Communities expected gas workers to use local restaurants and hotels and travel by motorcycle taxi," says Aly Caetano, Cabo Delgado co-ordinator for the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (CDD).

"Some entrepreneurs took on debt because they believed this development was coming. But they never see the people from Total."

The highly securitised nature of the project has added to local resentment, particularly as nearby communities continue to face attacks from insurgents.
Human rights concerns

On 24 March, 2021, Palma suffered the deadliest attack in its history when hundreds of militants looted property, killed residents and controlled the town for nearly two weeks. The death toll is estimated at around 1,500 people.

Residents say several hundred civilians managed to reach the Afungi peninsula. At the time, the gas project had already been suspended and only limited personnel remained on site. Nonetheless, evacuation boats were organised to transport people to Pemba.

Those who stayed behind say they later endured harsh reprisals by Mozambique's armed forces, known as the FADM, after government troops retook the town.

"Our own soldiers were killing us. Our brothers," says Cheila.

Two legal complaints have been filed against TotalEnergies in connection with the Palma attack.

The first was lodged in 2023 before a court in Nanterre, near Paris, by three survivors and four relatives of victims from the United Kingdom and South Africa. They accuse the company of involuntary manslaughter and failing to assist people in danger, alleging negligence in the management of security arrangements for staff and subcontractors.

A second complaint was filed in 2025 with France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office by the Germany-based European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).

The German human rights organisation is examining the relationship between TotalEnergies and the Mozambican armed forces tasked with protecting, among other sites, the Mozambique LNG project.

Rwandan soldiers guard the TotalEnergies LNG Project in Afungi in the Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique, on 29 September, 2022. AFP - CAMILLE LAFFONT

Victims take TotalEnergies to court over terror attack in Mozambique

Security agreement

In 2020, the Mozambique LNG project signed a memorandum of understanding with the Mozambican government regarding security.

The agreement provided for the deployment of a Joint Task Force of around 600 Mozambican soldiers in and around Afungi. Around 10 percent are elite troops known as fusileiros, trained by the United States.

Under the agreement, the project has to cover accommodation and food costs for the soldiers, who also receive a bonus linked to rank. Any involvement in abuses or human rights violations results in the automatic loss of that payment.

According to a 2023 internal audit commissioned by TotalEnergies and led in part by former French diplomat and humanitarian worker Jean-Christophe Ruffin, the arrangement was intended to reduce incentives for misconduct among troops, whose poor living conditions are widely recognised.

However, the report also raised concerns.

"The existence of a direct financial relationship with members of the Joint Task Force creates a direct link between Mozambique LNG and these troops," the report states. "It is doubtful that this conditional bonus can deter potential abuses. In the event of human rights violations, this relationship directly engages the responsibility of the consortium."

In 2021, payments to the Joint Task Force were suspended after local communities alleged human rights abuses. The allegations related to "abuse against two fishermen", according to TotalEnergies, and were not connected to the violence committed during the recapture of Palma.

Mozambican authorities have not opened an investigation into the events in Palma.

How Cabo Delgado's riches became fuel for the Islamist insurgency in Mozambique

For almost a decade, an Islamist group has terrorised Mozambique's northern province of Cabo Delgado. Despite vast reserves of rubies, timber and natural gas, the region remains the country's poorest. This first instalment of Mozambique Exposed – an investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories to which RFI contributed – examines how exploitation of the region's wealth, corruption and alleged abuses by security forces helped fuel the insurgency.


Issued on: 11/06/2026 - RFI

Despite vast reserves of rubies, timber and natural gas, Cabo Delgado remains Mozambique's poorest province. © Baptiste Condominas/RFI

Rainy season had already begun in 2017 when thousands of artisanal miners working around Namanhumbir, near Montepuez in the northern Cabo Delgado province of Mozambique, saw security forces approaching.

Many were arrested for what the authorities called illegal mining. Most of the miners, known locally as garimpeiros, came from outside the region.

Some returned to their home districts or crossed into neighbouring southern Tanzania. Others joined a little-known armed group that was gaining strength in northern Mozambique – known locally as Al-Shabab and linked to the Islamic State group (although with no connection to the Somali militant group of the same name).

"From then on, it was war," one miner recalled in a 2021 report by the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organisation.

Grievances linked to natural resources became a powerful recruiting tool for the armed group.

Control of natural resources by foreign companies is one of the main themes in Al-Shabab's messaging, according to Joao Feijo, a researcher with the Observatório do Meio Rural, a Mozambican rural affairs research institute.

Ruby boom

Among Cabo Delgado's most valuable assets are rubies. Deposits discovered in 2009 helped make the province the source of around 80 percent of the world's ruby reserves.

One of the industry's main operators is Montepuez Ruby Mining (MRM), which received a 25-year concession in 2012, covering 10,000 square kilometres.

MRM is a subsidiary of British mining company Gemfields Limited, owner of luxury brand Fabergé. Twenty-five percent of the company is owned by General Raimundo Pachinuapa, a senior member of Frelimo, Mozambique's ruling party since it gained independence from Portugal in 1975.

In 2019, Gemfields agreed to pay €6.7 million in compensation to miners who dropped legal action accusing the company of human rights violations.

The case was brought in London by law firm Leigh Day on behalf of 273 garimpeiros. It said physical and sexual violence, degrading treatment and killings were carried out by MRM security personnel and Mozambican security forces.

Gemfields acknowledged violence had occurred around Montepuez, but did not accept responsibility.

Abuses linked to mining operations have not stopped, said Aly Caetano, Cabo Delgado coordinator for the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, a Mozambican civil society organisation.

"Torture, illegal detention and killings continue," he said. "Meanwhile, the Montepuez-Pemba road remains the worst in the region. This feeling of being robbed feeds the terrorists' narrative."

Timber trail

Campaigners in Cabo Delgado also accuse authorities of profiting from the exploitation of the region's natural assets.

Far to the north lies Niassa Reserve, a protected area that has also become a centre for trafficking in ivory and valuable timber species.

In August 2020, Mozambican authorities seized 82 containers bound for China at the port of Pemba.

Inside were logs that investigators said had been cut illegally.

Four months later, the containers somehow escaped customs controls. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an international environmental watchdog, said 66 were later recovered while on their way to China.

Mozambique's timber industry is heavily dominated by Chinese operators, and is closely linked to the business interests of senior Frelimo figures.

One of them is José Pacheco, a former governor of Cabo Delgado and former agriculture minister.

An EIA investigation into Chinese forestry companies reported financial ties between Pacheco and a businessman identified as Liu. The two men met several times, including during a Frelimo congress in the port city of Pemba.

The World Resources Institute, a United States-based research organisation, said Mozambican timber worth more than $400 million reached Chinese markets in 2016.

Mozambican customs authorities declared only $100 million in exports that year.

Capitalising on inequality

More than 3,000 kilometres from the capital Maputo, Cabo Delgado remains Mozambique's poorest province.

The United Nations Development Programme reported that average income remains below one dollar per person per day. Illiteracy affects 61 percent of residents, and 45 percent of children suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Anger had been building for years in rural communities.

One of the Al-Shabab movement's leaders, Maulana Ali Cassimo, was a former agriculture ministry official who travelled through the countryside on a motorbike denouncing forced evictions, police brutality and what he described as Maputo's control of Cabo Delgado's wealth.

Mozambican soldiers patrol past a burned-out truck bearing the words "Shabaab Chinja", a reference to the Islamist armed group, in Mocímboa da Praia on 22 September 2021. © AFP

Promises of a fairer system formed part of the group's appeal, said Vasco King of Kundeleya, a human rights organisation based in Pemba.

"Al-Shabab wants to establish an Islamic caliphate," he said. "They believe a fairer order should be put in place. They capitalise on a social situation marked by unemployment and underdevelopment."

Those tensions erupted into open violence in October 2017. Several police stations in the coastal town of Mocimboa da Praia were attacked and around 15 people were killed.

"It was a shock," resident Omar Sufo said. "We knew people were training in the bush, but nobody imagined there would be an attack."

Gas in the crosshairs

Mozambique's Al-Shabab pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2019.

In a July 2020 edition, the group's propaganda newspaper Al Naba carried the headline: "Crusaders, beware of your investments in Mozambique."

Driving foreign economic players out of Cabo Delgado became a stated objective of the group.

Among those in its sights was the consortium developing a huge offshore gas field near the coastal town of Palma, in Cabo Delgado. The project contains reserves estimated at 5,000 billion cubic metres and involves French energy company TotalEnergies and its partners.

After years of its suspension, TotalEnergies announced this year that work on the project would resume.

The number of Al-Shabab fighters remains difficult to establish. The US National Counterterrorism Center estimated there were around 300 militants in 2025 – while the International Crisis Group put the figure at 3,000 in 2020.

The conflict has displaced at least 1 million people, a United Nations agency said.

This article has been adapted from the original version in French by Gaëlle Laleix, reporting from Cabo Delgado.

It is the first instalment of Mozambique Exposed, an investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a global non-profit network of investigative journalists. The project is based on nearly 100 interviews and five months of reporting by 30 journalists from 10 media organisations, including RFI and Les Observateurs de France 24 (France), Evident Media (United States), Expresso (Portugal), M28 Investigates (Rwanda), Paper Trail Media (Germany), SourceMaterial (United Kingdom), ZDF (Germany) and Zitamar News (Mozambique).

Ship from Colombia laden with food and other goods docks in Cuba to help ease crises

Copyright AP Photo

By Gavin Blackburn

Published on 12/06/2026 -  EURONEWS

Regular power outages have intensified since US President Donald Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.

A ship carrying nearly 100 tonnes of food and essential goods arrived in Cuba from Colombia on Friday as part of the humanitarian aid that several countries have sent to the island as a US energy embargo persists.

The ship, which departed Cartagena in early June, crossed the Havana Bay channel early in the morning flying the Colombian flag and escorted by a small Cuban auxiliary vessel.

The Colombian Presidential Agency for International Cooperation said that, on orders of President Gustavo Petro, the shipment included non-perishable food, medicine, hospital supplies, electrical materials, solar panels and other items.

The ship also carried seven tonnes of goods collected by solidarity groups.

Last weekend, another ship carrying 1,700 tonnes of essential goods from Mexico and Belize arrived in Havana.

People spend the night in the dark on the Malecon during a blackout in Havana, 21 March, 2026 AP Photo

Sanctions on Cuba

Washington announced sanctions against Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company on Thursday in a move expected to increase tensions between the two countries.

That announcement came almost a week after the US government sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other officials, as well as several institutions.

Cuba is already struggling under a decades-old embargo and a lack of petroleum as the US keeps pushing for a change in its economic and political model.

Power outages, already common given the economic and energetic crisis gripping the island for the past five years, have only intensified since Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.

Cuba's government said on Wednesday that the US oil blockade that has crippled the island is preventing the United Nations from distributing 170 containers of humanitarian aid.

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that 170 containers of UN aid worth $6.3 million (€5.4 million) "is not reaching beneficiaries due to the fuel shortage."

Writing on X, he stressed that the blockade was "not only hampering the performance of the Cuban economy" but also affecting the work of international organisations.

Related

• How Cubans feel about the US indictment of Raúl Castro

Both countries have acknowledged that they have held talks, but the scope of them is unknown.

Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since the US military invaded Venezuela and arrested former President Nicolás Maduro.

Last Thursday, Trump said Cuba has "sort of collapsed" and said "we're going to handle that as soon as we've finished" military operations in Iran.

The ‘Start of Summer’ Festival at the crossroads of Cuba’s political project

By Rubén Padrón Garriga

Published 12 June, 2026

First published in Spanish at La Joven Cuba. Translation by LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

For many Cuban families, the start of summer this year is anything but a celebration. Most households lack an Ecoflow system to make the power outages less unbearable. For them, the arrival of these months can only mean heat, mosquitoes and sleepless nights, because they cannot keep a fan running to provide some relief from the increasingly hot tropical nights.

If you are responsible for maintaining or managing a low-income household, the days are no less gruelling. Instead of tanning, the June sun burns the skin of those who wait for hours for a municipal electric tricycle to take them to work, or those who walk for miles looking for the small business that sells the cheapest chicken.

As this school year draws to a close, children from working-class families, even those with good grades, will not be able to go on trips any further than wherever their feet can take them. There will be no beaches, no swimming pools, no trips to the countryside. Many of those who have worked themselves to the bone all year long to support their families will also be unable to enjoy accessible leisure activities. Cinemas, theatres, and state-run entertainment venues remain closed almost everywhere because of the energy crisis. The country is surviving US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s attacks, but, according to President Miguel Díaz-Canel, “with the heroic resistance of the Cuban people, we are defending our sovereignty and are committed to perfecting the enormous work of social justice that socialist construction has built in Cuba.”

However, this “heroic resistance” is taking many different forms this summer. Some people cannot sleep because of the heat from an energy blackout, while others are dancing to the beat of reggaeton in a hotel pool. For them, the Start of Summer has a completely different meaning.

The “Start of Summer” festival took place between May 29–31 at the Resonance Musique Hotel in Varadero, although some of the festivities also extended to the Meliá Internacional hotel. According to reports in non-state media, it was organized by the Fiesta Havana and Rey Puma projects, with the media platform La Familia Cubana as its main promoter. There is no reliable information on what it cost to attend these events. Some advertisements on social media indicated a price of about US$170 a night for two people. These same sources also indicate that a table in the VIP area cost between $600 and $1000.

The event brought together such figures from the Cuban urban music scene as Yomil, Charly & Johayron, Ja Rulay, Wildey, Zurdo MC, El Micha, Hallel Génesis, Helabusador, and Rey Tony, among others. The La Familia Cubana influencer team documented every moment from the inside: backstage, interviews, concert clips… where everyone was having a fantastic time, everything was vibrant, abundant, and flowing…

Among the more “illustrious” attendees was the controversial influencer and business owner Sandro Castro, Fidel Castro's grandson, who shared images on his social media of lunches at the Xanadu Restaurant in Varadero, jet ski rides, beach parties, and a video showing the now-mythical, but increasingly less credible, beach sign that reads, “What is collected here is for the people.” Sandro Castro also took the opportunity to comment that the dolphins that protected Elián González on the high seas were now bringing people from Miami to Cuba to attend the Start of Summer festival. He also launched his new energy drink, Vampirash.

Anyone viewing the images without context might think that the event was taking place in Cancun or Punta Cana, and not in a “socialist” country where blackouts typically exceed 20 hours a day, water is scarce, medicines are nowhere to be found in pharmacies, and whose government has been asking for international aid for months to meet the basic needs of its population amid the US-imposed oil embargo.

Of course, the controversy was immediate. Anyone who does not know what Cuba is like might think that those who were outraged and attacked the opulence displayed amid the “resistance” were Communist militants, brandishing that maxim from the manuals on socialist transition, “to each according to their work.” But no. Granma, the Communist Party of Cuba’s official organ, remained silent on the matter. Those who expressed outrage were, generally, opposition journalists and influencers, the vast majority of whom are avowed defenders of the most neoliberal variant of capitalism, a model that accepts inequality not as a distortion, but as a fundamental mechanism of its operation.

A curious paradox, it seems that communist morality has switched sides. Today, it is the apologists for capital who are scandalised by its harshest consequences.

It is worth noting that it was not always like this. In the “socialist” Cuba of my childhood (the late 1990s and early 2000s), despite the lingering effects of the so-called Special Period1, many working families still had access to state-provided vacation options. Popular campsites — modest but affordable facilities located in beaches and natural areas throughout the country — allowed families to spend a few days away from home at reasonable prices. In addition, trade unions managed vacation villas that were allocated to “outstanding workers”. Transportation to beach areas was also increased during the summer, and inexpensive food stalls were set up so that workers and their children could enjoy the season without money being the sole deciding factor.

Of course, it was not perfect equality, it never was. The best popular campsites were almost always “reserved” for people with connections, there was favouritism in the allocation of villas, and you travelled like sardines in a can on the buses to the beach. Nevertheless, it was a system that compensated, through social transfers, for salaries that were not enough to afford a hotel stay. A system that recognised that summer, rest, the right for your children to see the sea, could not be privileges that only those who could afford them could enjoy.

Today that floor is gone. In 2010, Raúl Castro announced the elimination of so-called “unnecessary free services” as part of the process of updating the economic model. At the time many of us thought it was a reasonable step, since some of the subsidies distorted the economy and rewarded waste. But the decision was not followed by a cross-the-board rise in state workers’ income, and a social safety net was not created for those who could not afford to pay to replace these free services. On the contrary, driven by the state, the economy became increasingly dollarised while wages were frozen. Inflation did the rest.

In Cuba today, the public sector continues to have a dominant presence in such sensitive areas as health, education, science and other productive sectors. It employs the majority of workers. But those workers have been left in limbo, without fair wages or complementary benefits. A doctor, a teacher, a scientist, let alone a worker in a state-owned enterprise, cannot afford to take a vacation without help from family members abroad or supplemental income in foreign currency.

Judging by the videos, the Start of Summer festival in Varadero was not filled with foreign tourists. The vast majority of those present were Cubans, part of the same society in which thousands of families now struggle to survive the crisis. This inevitably raises the question: who can afford to attend such an event?

Here it is important to avoid falling into typical black-and-white thinking such as “all of them are the sons and daughters of the politicians and party leaders.”

At those VIP tables, there were Cubans from very diverse backgrounds. There were those who had been absent from the island for years, returning with the foreign currency they had saved in the “capitalist” system. There were the owners of private businesses who had genuinely prospered — and it is worth making the distinction, not just any business, but one profitable enough to allow them to spend hundreds of dollars on leisure. There were the “influencers” who are paid to promote those businesses. There were also those who knew how to capitalise on assets they acquired through social redistribution mechanisms, assets that for decades had no market value, such as a mansion in Vedado that can suddenly be sold or rented. And, we must not ignore it, there were also those who had accumulated wealth through the misappropriation of resources and corruption.

The truth is that, regardless of the reasons why each person has money — some legitimate and others not — today many Cubans are able to show that they can spend hundreds of dollars in hotels while others struggle to survive. I remember that when I was a child — this was before the expansion of the private sector in 2016 and the authorisation of private businesses in 2021 — there was still a certain fear of showing that one was living “beyond one’s means.” The system was designed to prevent accumulation, and if you did accumulate wealth, the suspicion that you were doing something outside of the ordinary soon surfaced. Even those who lived off remittances from abroad showed a certain discretion regarding what most people lacked.

Today the scenario is radically different. Inequality and class privilege are no longer something hidden, but rather something that is displayed with pride. When you see the sons and daughters of the country’s leaders on social media living the high life, who can feel ashamed of living above the means of “working people”? Paradoxically, inequality only becomes a topic of conversation when an event such as the Start of Summer festival confronts us with these contradictions, but generally speaking, the debate tends to take on a moralising tone and remain at that level. It rarely manages to go a step further and analyse the causes and consequences of this problem.

Sociologist Mayra Espina Prieto, who has been researching poverty and inequality in Cuba for decades, explained it clearly in an interview with La Joven Cuba. What is happening is not simply a reconcentration of wealth, but the result of a process that she calls social restratification. Until the 1980s, the revolutionary project achieved a real process of de-stratification — the social pyramid flattened, the distance between the base and the top decreased — but that advance was never complete, and from the 1990s onwards it began to be reversed. “With the aggravating factor,” she notes, “that those who advance to the new positions offering better opportunities are almost always groups that historically were already better off.”

Warning that these figures should be taken with caution — as they are estimated from mirror data, since Cuba does not publish figures on income poverty — Espina estimates that between 40-45% of the Cuban population are unable to cover their basic needs with their income, while a small group (no more than 11-13% of the population) can be ranked with incomes far above the average, with a real ability to live comfortably from day to day and, in some cases, display the advantages this income provides. Between these two extremes, there is an increasingly unstable intermediate fringe that can fall steeply with any blow: an illness, the loss of remittances, the death of a family member abroad, or whatever.

This re-stratification has effects that corrode the social fabric, since the confidence that effort leads to a dignified life disappears. It normalises that a few have access to what the majority lack and the sense of a common project is weakened.

In a society that for decades built its legitimacy on the promise of equality, that erosion has a political weight that transcends indignation when a show of opulence such as the Start of Summer appears. It means that more and more people stop believing the system they live in has something to offer them. This has a clear effect on the way Cuban families organise their daily lives amid the current situation in which inflation, the paralysis of public transport, blackouts and the gradual disappearance of social transfers have pushed each household to subsist on its own: an Ecoflow, so as not to depend on the electricity grid; a tricycle, so as not to depend on the bus; a parallel income, so as not to depend on the state salary; purchases in the private sector, because the supply in Cuban pesos is practically non-existent. These are individual solutions to collective problems.

In this trap lies perhaps the most silent effect of the current crisis — which in this sense is far from the one that occurred in the ’90s. Solutions are no longer sought in the collective project, but become a personal responsibility.

Meanwhile, in official discourse, there continues to be talk of resistance, social justice, popular sovereignty, socialism, when at the same time daily life is organised around the logic of everyone for themselves, fending for oneself and making the most of things. When a system forces people to exist in this way, it becomes increasingly difficult to convince them that they are still part of a collective project. And, one might ask, why should we?

To the worker who today “resists” the summer with 20 hours of blackout and one meal a day, how do you explain the fact that in that same country there are those who can celebrate surrounded by luxury? How do you convince him that he has to keep fighting to save socialism?

That is why it would be naïve to be scandalised that many Cubans no longer feel any attachment to the word socialism. From what concrete experience could they feel this attachment? From a state salary that just covers a carton of eggs and a bag of milk? From an endless blackout while the neighbour lights up with the solar panel sent to him by the family from “imperialism”? From seeing how rest, leisure, mobility, access to well-being, gradually become signifiers of class? What they want, then, is for the capitalism that de facto exists to be administered and managed better, so that they too can access the capital needed for a dignified life.

However, our political menu does not abound with alternatives either. The official left continues to cling to a rhetoric that no longer manages to name the real experience of the majority, invoking an egalitarian horizon while administering a society that is increasingly unequal, more fragmented and more dependent on private solutions to problems that were previously assumed to be collective. On the other hand, a large part of the opposition — mostly located on the right — justifiably denounces the official discourse’s hypocrisy, but usually does so from an idealised vision of capitalism, one where “everyone can make it” if they try hard enough. The problem is that they rarely stop to think about what happens to those who, despite their efforts, are unable to secure a minimum of dignity for themselves via the market, as is the case in underdeveloped capitalist countries.

What they propose, in most cases, is not a capitalism with redistribution mechanisms, strong public services, subsidies for vulnerable people, the elderly or poor families, or a model where private enterprise coexists with public institutions to guarantee a minimum floor for all. What they propose is, rather, that the state withdraw and that “Saint Market” regulates social life. In a society conceived by “classical liberalism,” it no longer matters too much that some can celebrate in Varadero while others do not have enough to eat, because in the end the one who celebrates would be seen as someone who earned it, and the one who does not succeed as someone who did not know how or want to succeed.

***

To those who are genuinely indignant over the Start of Summer, I say that it is nothing more than a symptom of the problem. Those hotels illuminated amid widespread darkness are a postcard that reflects the Cuban model’s main contradiction. One that has made socialism and social justice its banner, but that today can do nothing but mismanage a defective capitalism.

That is why there is no use in expressing one’s shock on networks or calling for a ban on the next edition. Covering up this spectacle would hardly serve to hide the marks of a society that has long been reorganising itself around privilege, inequality and individual capacity over the collective project. The most serious thing is that this reorganisation occurs without naming itself and without offering the mediations that, in other capitalist contexts, progressive governments have implemented to cushion the fall of those below or help them reach the middle.

The Cuban crisis, as it stands today, is unlikely to last much longer. Whatever its outcome, rebuilding the country, with this system or with the one that comes, will have to be a collective task of which people feel a part of. However, no reconstruction will be possible without facing up to the causes that brought us to this point, amid external asphyxiation and internal errors that have ended up emptying most of the promises, which for decades sustained the national project’s legitimacy, of their content.

Facing these contradictions implies putting an end to administering their symptoms, hiding them behind slogans or selling miraculous solutions. It means starting to honestly discuss what country really exists, what majorities are being left out, but, above all, what material, social and political conditions should be rebuilt to guarantee them a dignified life, and how to do it. Everything else — the passing scandal, the selective outrage and the easy promises — remains just another way of going around in circles.

Rubén Padrón Garriga has a degree in Social Communication from the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana and has collaborated with various media outlets. He is a social communicator by training and journalist by hobby.

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  Translator's note: The Special Period refers to the economic crisis that hit Cuba in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It fall led Cuba to lose more than 80% of its imports and exports.

The Collapse Of Government In Nepal 2025: An Inclusive Analysis

Protest in Nepal. Photo Credit: हिमाल सुवेदी, Wikipedia Commons

June 12, 2026 
By Abdul Wasi Popalzay and Yugdeep Airi

LONG READ

On 4 September 2025, the government of Nepal, under Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, announced a sweeping prohibition on twenty-six social media platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, citing the Information Technology and Cyber Security Bill 2025 as its legal basis (CNN, 2025). While formally justified as a regulatory measure, the ban quickly came to symbolize authoritarian overreach for Nepal’s digitally native Generation Z, a cohort aged roughly 13 to 28, who interpreted the move as a calculated attempt to silence mounting dissent against corruption, nepotism, and elite impunity (Britannica, 2025; AP News, 2025).

What began as digital indignation swiftly evolved into offline mobilization. Leaderless collectives such as “Hami Nepal” repurposed alternative platforms like Discord to coordinate demonstrations that spread across Kathmandu and other urban centers, escalating into direct confrontations with police and military forces (Gurkhatech, 2025; The Conversation, 2025). Within days, state repression intensified.

On 8 September, security forces deployed tear gas, water cannons, and live ammunition, leaving nineteen people dead; by 14 September, at least seventy-two fatalities and more than 1,300 injuries had been recorded, while demonstrators torched more than three hundred government buildings, including Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the Prime Minister’s residence,causing an estimated $21 billion in damages (BBC, 2025; New York Times, 2025; Al Jazeera, 2025a; Al Jazeera, 2025b).

The crisis culminated in Oli’s resignation on 9 September, paving the way for an interim administration led by former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, which was tasked with stabilizing governance and preparing elections scheduled for March 2026 (BBC, 2025b; Al Jazeera, 2025d). At face value, the social media ban appears to have been the proximate trigger for regime collapse. Yet a growing body of evidence and scholarly commentary suggests that the eruption of unrest was not simply the outcome of a single tactical misstep but rather the culmination of deeper and long-standing structural failures embedded in Nepal’s political and economic order.


For more than a decade, Nepal’s governance architecture has been characterized by elite capture, weak federal decentralization, and Kathmandu-centric power consolidation, undermining accountability and provincial autonomy (Longdom Publishing, 2025; Political Geography, 2022/2025 update). Simultaneously, the socio-economic plight of Nepal’s youth has intensified: unemployment among those aged 15–24 reached 20.82 percent in 2025, remittances accounted for 33.1 percent of GDP, and an estimated 2,000 young Nepalis emigrated daily in search of low-wage employment abroad (World Bank, 2025a; World Bank, 2025b; IMF, 2025). The NGO Federation of Nepal’s 2025 Country Inequality Report concluded that such structural inequalities are “deeply systemic,” leaving fertile ground for unrest (NGO Federation of Nepal, 2025).

Against this backdrop, Oli’s decision to impose a social media ban, compounded by lethal state violence, functioned less as an isolated cause than as a catalytic spark that illuminated these entrenched vulnerabilities. The central puzzle for analysis, therefore, is causal: to what extent was the government’s collapse directly attributable to the social media ban, and to what extent did the ban merely expose a fragile system already primed for implosion?


The significance of addressing this puzzle is twofold. Empirically, Nepal’s case provides a rare and vivid instance of a hybrid regime collapsing with remarkable speed in response to digitally mediated mobilization. It offers an opportunity to dissect the interplay between structural decay and catalytic repression in ways that enrich our understanding of state fragility. Theoretically, the case advances debates within political science by bridging two literatures that are often examined separately: studies of hybrid regimes, which emphasize elite strategies of resilience and institutional hollowing, and studies of digital social movements, which focus on the capacity of leaderless, networked actors to circumvent traditional barriers to coordination (Staniland, 2025; The Conversation, 2025).

By situating Nepal’s crisis within this intersection, the paper contributes to a more nuanced conceptualization of regime vulnerability in the digital age. Furthermore, the events echo recent precedents in South Asia, notably Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic protests and Bangladesh’s 2024 student revolts, that similarly witnessed digitally empowered youth movements destabilizing governments under conditions of economic duress and institutional malaise (Eurasia Review, 2025; Divya Gandotra Tandon, 2025).


Nepal thus constitutes not an isolated anomaly but part of a broader regional syndrome, underscoring the urgency of comparative inquiry. This study is guided by a central question: to what extent was the fall of the Oli government in September 2025 the direct result of the social media ban, versus the culmination of long-standing structural failures within Nepal’s political and economic system?

Four secondary questions flow from this puzzle. First, how did specific socio-economic conditions, such as youth unemployment, remittance dependency, and mass emigration, create fertile ground for Gen Z-led mobilization? Second, in what ways did the government’s repressive strategies, including the ban and the use of lethal force, transform a digital rights issue into a nationwide movement for systemic change? Third, how does the leaderless, digitally networked morphology of the Gen Z movement compare to earlier mobilizations in Nepal, and what does this reveal about the future of political organization? Fourth, what regional patterns of youth-led uprisings across South Asia are illuminated by Nepal’s case, and what broader drivers of hybrid-regime instability can be identified?

The architecture of decline: pre-existing conditions for Nepal’s political unraveling

Nepal’s political landscape since the abolition of the monarchy in 2008 has been characterized by profound instability, with 14 governments failing to complete a full term, a cycle widely attributed to elite capture and chronically weak institutions that prioritize coalitional bargaining over public accountability (Paudel, 2025).

This environment of perpetual flux has fostered a culture of impunity, where corruption thrives unchecked. Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), released in 2025, ranks Nepal 107th out of 180 countries with a score of 34 out of 100, indicating a stagnation in anti-corruption efforts and reinforcing public perception of a political class insulated from consequences (Transparency International, 2025a).


Democratic backsliding further exacerbated this decay. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s two dissolutions of parliament, in December 2020 and May 2021, both subsequently reinstated by the Supreme Court, are emblematic of executive overreach that systematically weakened judicial independence and eroded constitutional checks and balances (Kurlantzick, 2025). This pattern of instability is not merely numerical; as analyzed in peer-reviewed studies, the frequent collapse of coalitions between 2022 and 2024, often due to petty power-sharing disputes rather than ideological differences, mirrors a broader regional trend of fragile governance seen in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (Adhikari, 2025).

The phenomenon of “Nepo Kids”, the privileged offspring of political elites flaunting their wealth and influence, became a potent symbol of this systemic rot, crystallizing popular anger over a system perceived to protect and enrich a select few. As one anonymous youth activist starkly put it in an interview, “Nepo Kids symbolize how corruption protects the elite while we suffer” (FES Asia, 2025). This sentiment underscores a generational rift and a profound loss of faith in the political establishment. Defenders of the status quo, however, often deflected blame externally.

Former Prime Minister Oli himself, whose fourth term ended in resignation on September 9, 2025, claimed just days prior that the instability was due to “opportunistic elements infiltrating genuine demands” (Eurasia Review, 2025), a narrative that sought to attribute the crisis to exogenous factors rather than internal failings. Some pro-regime scholars have extended this argument, suggesting in publications like GIS Reports that geopolitical competition between India and China is the primary driver of Nepal’s instability, thereby downplaying domestic accountability (GIS Reports, 2025).


This deflection is robustly countered by empirical analysis. As rebuttals in Eurasia Review (2025) contend, external pressures may exacerbate Nepal’s situation, but they cannot explain the persistent internal culture of impunity evidenced by 14 failed governments and stagnant CPI scores. The IMF’s 2025 Staff Report provides a more nuanced institutional analysis, positing that Oli’s actions exemplify hybrid regime tactics that undermine judicial independence and foster an environment where corruption scandals, particularly in public tenders, flourish and amplify public distrust (IMF, 2025a).

This assessment is echoed by opposition figures like Sher Bahadur Deuba, President of the Nepali Congress and a five-time former PM, who criticized the interim government’s moves as further backsliding, stating that “the dissolution of parliament violates constitutional norms” (UN News, 2025). The academic conclusion, as detailed in 2025 peer-reviewed works, is that Nepal’s political rot represents a failed democratic transition, necessitating substantive constitutional amendments to ensure coalition durability and prevent the recurrence of such crises (Adhikari, 2025; Kurlantzick, 2025).


This profound political failure is inextricably linked to a parallel economic collapse, which together severed the social contract between the state and its citizens. Nepal’s economy has become a “tinderbox of despair,” characterized by a toxic combination of high youth unemployment, crippling dependence on remittances, and mass emigration (Paudel, 2025). The World Bank’s 2025 Nepal Development Update places youth unemployment (ages 15-24) at 20.82% for FY2024/25, while remittances constitute 24.25% of GDP, a figure projected to rise, and approximately 2,000 young people emigrate daily in search of work (World Bank, 2025c; IMF, 2025b).

This exodus, particularly the surge in migrant outflows to the Middle East documented in the IOM’s 2025 Migration Governance Indicators, is driven by powerful economic push factors, mirroring patterns in Bangladesh and reflecting a domestic economy incapable of creating meaningful opportunities for its educated youth (IOM, 2025). The human cost of this failure is starkly illustrated in the words of a migrant worker who stated, “I left for Malaysia because no jobs at home match my education” (Migration Data Portal, 2025). This individual despair aggregates into a national crisis. While some IMF analyses project a modest 4.0% growth rate for 2025 and suggest remittances provide a crucial economic buffer, implying an adaptive rather than broken social contract (IMF, 2025c), this optimistic view is heavily rebutted.

More critical analyses, including World Bank updates, argue that such figures dangerously overlook the depth of youth despair, noting that 33.7% of Nepali youth are classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), a statistic indicative of a systemic breakdown rather than resilience (World Bank, 2025f). Dilip Ratha, Lead Economist on Migration at the World Bank, warns in the 2025 Remittances Report that “Nepal’s 24% GDP from remittances risks hollowing out the workforce,” creating a long-term dependency that undermines sustainable development (World Bank, 2025e). This economic reality fueled the political unrest. As opposition leader Gagan Thapa, Nepali Congress General Secretary, argued, “economic despair fuels unrest, with youth leaving because the state fails them” (UN, 2025).


Former Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat acknowledged this policy failure in a World Bank briefing, noting that “remittances bolster resilience but cannot substitute for domestic job creation” (World Bank, 2025d). Academic expert Suman Sharma synthesizes this in a 2025 paper, analyzing that the mass emigration peak of 2,000 people per day evidences a broken social contract stemming from post-COVID recovery failures and necessitates urgent inclusive policies (Sharma, 2025).

As has been demonstrated, Nepal’s economic despair is not a separate issue but the direct result of a ruptured social contract, requiring urgent, targeted investments in vocational training and small-to-medium enterprises to stem the hemorrhage of human capital and begin the arduous task of rebuilding public trust.
The catalyst and the conflagration: a strategic miscalculation

The Nepali government’s decision on September 4, 2025, to ban 26 social media platforms was ostensibly framed as a necessary measure to combat misinformation and enforce regulatory compliance under the Information Technology and Cyber Security Bill 2025. A statement from the Ministry of Communications, reported by UN News on September 5, justified the action as essential “to combat misinformation and ensure platform accountability,” aiming to safeguard national security amid escalating online dissent (UN News, 2025a).


However, in a society deeply integrated with digital tools, this regulatory move was immediately perceived as a profound authoritarian overreach. Academic analyses, such as that by Acharya & Acharya (2025), frame the ban as a critical misjudgment that ignored the socio-economic role of these platforms. In a nation where remittances, heavily reliant on affordable digital communication, constitute 24.25% of GDP (World Bank, 2025) and approximately 29 million Nepalis live abroad, platforms like WhatsApp serve as indispensable lifelines for maintaining family connections and facilitating financial transactions.

As one Nepalese migrant worker starkly expressed in an IOM interview on September 10, “Without WhatsApp, I can’t afford to call home, it’s an attack on our families” (IOM, 2025). This sentiment was echoed by opposition leader Gagan Thapa, General Secretary of the Nepali Congress, who argued on September 6 that the ban “silences the voices of our youth and migrants, who depend on these tools for survival” (Human Rights Watch, 2025a). The government’s action, rather than quelling dissent, inadvertently framed the state as antagonistic to fundamental communicative and economic needs, thereby igniting immediate protests.


Expert analysis, such as Gurung’s (2025) ResearchGate study, posits that the ban’s logic fundamentally underestimated the adaptability of digital natives, who swiftly migrated to alternative platforms like Discord, thereby amplifying rather than containing dissent. While government-aligned scholars countered that the ban was a proactive measure against foreign-influenced misinformation aimed at protecting national sovereignty (Paudel, 2025), rebuttals in outlets like The Conversation (2025) noted the historical shortsightedness of such shutdowns, which consistently increase radicalization, as evidenced by Nepal’s rapid protest escalation. The academic conclusion, supported by global reports, is that the ban functioned not as a mere regulatory misstep but as a pivotal trigger that exposed deep communication fractures in a remittance-dependent economy, highlighting the urgent need for more inclusive digital policies (World Bank, 2025; Amnesty International, 2025a).

The state’s response to the burgeoning protests marked a severe and fatal escalation. Beginning with the digital shutdown on September 4, the government rapidly progressed to employing lethal force by September 8, a transition that human rights organizations unequivocally condemned as disproportionate and in violation of international standards. Major claims from Amnesty International (2025b) and Human Rights Watch (2025b) assert that this securitized response radicalized initially peaceful protesters.


Statistics compiled by the UN and Amnesty detail a grim toll: by September 14, at least 72 deaths (including 60 protesters, 9 prisoners, and 3 police officers) and 2,113 injuries had been recorded, alongside economic damages estimated at $21 billion (UN News, 2025b; Reuters, 2025). A Nepalese police official, in a statement cited by the OHCHR on September 9, defended these actions as “necessary to maintain order against infiltrators,” attempting to justify the force as a response to chaos (OHCHR, 2025).

However, this narrative was starkly contested. Opposition leader Ram Chandra Paudel of the Nepali Congress declared on September 10 that “lethal force against unarmed youth is a crime that erodes all legitimacy” (Human Rights Watch, 2025c), a sentiment echoed by protesters themselves. One demonstrator, quoted in Amnesty reports on September 8, stated, “They shot us for speaking out, now we fight for everything” (Amnesty International, 2025b), illustrating the profound radicalization catalyzed by state violence. A

cademic experts like Bishnu Upreti et al. (2025) analyze this pattern as characteristic of hybrid regimes, where initial digital repression escalates into physical violence, thereby confirming state impunity in the public eye and irrevocably eroding legitimacy. While state defenders, such as those publishing in GIS Reports (2025), argued that force was a reactive measure to protester violence including arson, rebuttals from Amnesty International (2025c) cited evidence of unprovoked shootings, deemed excessive under international law.


The academic conclusion, as per 2025 analyses, is that this escalation critically undermined state authority, transforming grievances into a widespread demand for systemic accountability and underscoring the imperative for rights-based policing reforms (OHCHR, 2025; Upreti et al., 2025). This sequence of actions constituted a profound strategic miscalculation by the state. The ban and subsequent violent repression fundamentally misread the resilience and motivations of the populace, particularly the youth. What began as a discrete protest against a specific policy was rapidly transformed into a nationwide uprising demanding comprehensive anti-corruption reforms and elite accountability (The Diplomat, 2025).

Academic arguments, such as those advanced by Sharma (2025), contend that this miscalculation reflects a deeper ontological insecurity among Nepali youth, for whom state repression served as final proof of systemic failure, thereby amplifying calls for structural overhaul. The statistics are telling: protests spread to multiple cities, resulting in over 300 government buildings torched and a collapse of the stock market (IMF, 2025). This pattern mirrors regional precedents, such as Sri Lanka’s 2022 Aragalaya movement, where similar state missteps led to regime change (New Lines Magazine, 2025).


Even as Prime Minister Oli resigned on September 9, he persisted in deflecting blame, admitting to an “extraordinary situation” but attributing the crisis to “vested groups” (Reuters, 2025), a stance that further highlighted the elite’s disconnect. In contrast, a youth opposition leader declared on September 12 that “Repression united us against the system” (UN News, 2025d), a sentiment captured succinctly by a protester on X (formerly Twitter): “Ban was spark, bullets the fuel, now we demand change” (ChronoverseTick, 2025).

World experts like Joshua Kurlantzick (2025) of the Council on Foreign Relations contextualize Nepal’s error within broader South Asian trends, where digital amplification transforms state repression into a catalyst for systemic demands. While counterarguments posited that external proxies exploited the situation (Eurasia Review, 2025), rebuttals emphasize the overwhelming empirical evidence of domestic grievances driving the change (The Conversation, 2025). The foregoing discussion has shown that, the state’s repressive tactics were a fatal error, igniting a conflagration that could have been avoided. This miscalculation signals a critical lesson for governance in the digital era: in fragile democracies, adaptive and inclusive governance is not merely preferable but essential to survival.
The new agents of change: anatomy of a Gen Z Revolt

The 2025 Nepalese Gen Z protests emerged as a paradigmatic example of a leaderless movement, characterized by a horizontal, decentralized structure that fundamentally bypassed traditional political hierarchies. This digital-native morphology enabled rapid mobilization and resilience in the face of state repression, particularly after the September 4 social media ban.


As academic DB Subedi (2025) argues, this structure reflects a significant shift toward decentralized activism in hybrid regimes, where platforms like Discord and Instagram facilitate anonymous coordination, thereby reducing vulnerability to state crackdowns. Statistics from Amnesty International’s 2025 report quantify this digital mobilization, indicating over 145,000 participants in Discord servers such as “Hami Nepal,” with Instagram stories serving as critical tools for amplifying calls to action and facilitating the protest’s rapid spread across Kathmandu and beyond between September 8 and 10 (Amnesty International, 2025a). This decentralized model was not without its strategic innovations; in a striking example of digital decision-making, Discord polls were used to select former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as an interim leader on September 12, a tactic that mirrored the decentralized processes observed in Bangladesh’s 2024 student protests (Human Rights Watch, 2025a).

The conscious rejection of centralized leadership was a defining feature. As Gen Z protester Diwakar Dangal stated in an interview on September 11, “We are not capable of taking the leadership… This bloodshed is because of you (old leaders)” (ANI, 2025), a sentiment that underscored a strategic aversion to co-optation and infiltration.

Opposition figure Gagan Thapa acknowledged this strength on September 12, noting that “The movement’s digital structure allowed it to thrive without a single leader” (The Kathmandu Post, 2025). However, this very structure drew skepticism from some quarters; counterarguments in Eurasia Review (2025) suggested the leaderless facade potentially masked external orchestration by foreign actors using digital tools to exert influence.

These claims are robustly rebutted by the OHCHR (2025), which emphasizes empirical evidence of an organic, youth-driven decentralization, arguing that such accusations function as an unsubstantiated deflection from legitimate internal grievances. The academic conclusion, as per 2025 peer-reviewed works, is that the movement’s morphology signals a transformative model for youth activism, leveraging digital tools for resilience, yet it inherently risks fragmentation and requires safeguards against co-optation to achieve sustained political impact (Subedi, 2025; Gurung, 2025). The movement’s power derived not only from its structure but from its compelling and unifying narratives. The discourse around “Nepo Kids”, the privileged offspring of political elites, served as a potent viral symbol of systemic corruption and generational disenfranchisement.

As researcher N Gurung (2025) deconstructed, the “Nepo Kids” narrative, which went viral from September 4 in Kathmandu, effectively unified Gen Z by starkly contrasting the luxury of the elite with widespread poverty and economic despair, particularly amid a youth unemployment rate of 20.8% (Human Rights Watch, 2025b). This anti-elitism discourse was amplified digitally, bridging individual grievances into a powerful collective identity focused on systemic inequality (Subedi, 2025).


The narratives were passionately articulated by participants like 19-year-old student protester Binu KC, who stated simply on September 9, “We want to see an end to corruption in Nepal” (Human Rights Watch, 2025a). While former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli dismissively claimed on September 7 that “Gen Z thinks they can demand anything” (Eurasia Review, 2025), opposition leader Sher Bahadur Deuba acknowledged the potency of these narratives on September 14, conceding that “Nepo Kids symbolize systemic rot” (The New Humanitarian, 2025). World officials like Rupert Colville of the OHCHR emphasized the gravity of these disenfranchisement narratives, noting on September 8 that they “demand transparent probes” into state violence (OHCHR, 2025).

While some counterarguments again claimed these narratives were externally amplified to serve geopolitical agendas (Eurasia Review, 2025), rebuttals from Amnesty International (2025b) asserted clear evidence of authentic disenfranchisement, with deep-seated corruption perceptions being the primary driver of unity. The academic conclusion is that these mobilizing narratives were exceptionally effective in unifying the revolt, demonstrating the formidable power of digital discourses in channeling generational anger, though their long-term sustainability is contingent upon tangible institutional reforms addressing the root causes of inequality (Gurung, 2025; Subedi, 2025).

This Gen Z revolt stands in stark contrast to previous waves of political mobilization in Nepal, particularly the 2006 democracy movement. Academics highlight that while the 2006 movement was a party-led, hierarchical campaign primarily focused on ending the monarchy through structured political alliances, the 2025 uprising was a digitally-coordinated, leaderless movement targeting systemic corruption and elite capture within the post-republican political framework (Subedi, 2025; Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 2025).

This contrast is evident in the tactics and velocity of the movements; UN reports note that the 2025 protests resulted in 72 deaths within a condensed 48-hour period, a pace of escalation and casualty rate that underscores the accelerated, digital nature of the revolt compared to the more prolonged 2006 campaign (UN News, 2025b). Sudan Gurung, president of Hami Nepal, articulated this distinction on September 12, stating, “Unlike 2006’s party-driven push, this is youth-led without leaders” (The New Humanitarian, 2025).

Veteran politician Ram Chandra Paudel further elaborated on September 14, noting “2006 ended monarchy; 2025 challenges the republic’s elites,” highlighting the evolution of protest goals from establishing a republic to demanding accountability within it (Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 2025).

An anonymous protester summarized the tactical shift to Human Rights Watch on September 12, stating, “We use apps, not alliances, that’s our difference from 2006” (Human Rights Watch, 2025a). However, some experts, like Roman Gautam, editor of Himal South Asian, offered a note of caution on September 13, analyzing that “2025’s revolt risks repeating 2006’s cycle without change,” warning of potential backsliding if deep structural reforms are not achieved (TOI Plus, 2025).


Joshua Kurlantzick (2025) of the Council on Foreign Relations compared “2006’s structured tactics in Kathmandu to 2025’s digital decentralization,” noting the uniqueness of the latter in its speed and singular youth focus. While some counterarguments downplay this uniqueness by pointing to potential similarities in external influences (Eurasia Review, 2025), Drawing everything together the 2025 Gen Z revolt’s digital, leaderless structure represents a distinct and evolved model of activism that accelerates political change but concurrently introduces new risks of instability if its energy is not channeled into concrete institutional reforms.
A regional phenomenon: Nepal in the south Asian mirror

The 2025 Gen Z-led uprising in Nepal did not occur in a vacuum; it represents the latest manifestation of a broader regional pattern of youth-driven political upheaval across South Asia. Major claims assert that Nepal’s crisis mirrors the trajectories of Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh in 2024, forming a distinct syndrome where acute economic crises ignite the rapid collapse of hybrid regimes, a process dramatically accelerated by digital mobilization and met with characteristically repressive state responses (Staniland, 2025).

Academic arguments frame these events as interconnected failures of governance, where entrenched elites’ profound inability to address post-pandemic economic woes and deep-seated corruption exposes a fundamental institutional fragility common to the region (Staniland, 2025; Al Jazeera, 2025a). The latest statistics from the World Bank’s 2025 South Asia Development Update quantify the shared economic vulnerabilities: regional youth unemployment averages 18-22% in FY2024/25, while remittances constitute a critical 24-33% of GDP in Nepal and Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka continues to grapple with a debilitating debt crisis lingering at 110% of GDP (World Bank, 2025a).

This combustible economic mix has repeatedly ignited political conflagrations. Major examples include Sri Lanka’s 2022 Aragalaya protests, which successfully ousted the powerful Rajapaksa regime amid severe fuel shortages; Bangladesh’s 2024 student-led quota reform movement, which escalated to force the exile of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina; and Nepal’s 2025 unrest, triggered by a social media ban and culminating in over 72 deaths and Prime Minister Oli’s resignation (AP News, 2025; Carnegie Endowment, 2025).

Diverse voices highlight both the parallels and nuances of this regional trend. Nepalese interim leader Sushila Karki, the former Chief Justice appointed on September 12, 2025, explicitly linked the crisis to regional dynamics, stating “We must address youth demands for integrity and rule of law,” thereby emphasizing the imperative of economic reforms in the stabilization phase (Human Rights Watch, 2025a). An opposition analyst from Bangladesh’s Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) reinforced this interconnectedness in a September 16, 2025, report, arguing that “Youth uprisings in Nepal and Bangladesh stem from unmet economic expectations” (CPD, 2025).


A retrospective reflection from a Sri Lankan protester, cited in Carnegie reports, drew a direct line to Nepal’s experience: “Economic hardship united us against elite corruption” (Carnegie Endowment, 2025). This pattern of state response, often violent and escalatory, was condemned by global figures. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted on September 9, 2025, that “Violence in Nepal echoes Bangladesh’s repression,” and called for immediate investigations (OHCHR, 2025a).

Academic expert Paul Staniland, a professor at the University of Chicago, synthesized these events in a September 2025 analysis, arguing that “Nepal’s rapid fall, like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, shows decentralized youth movements toppling hollow institutions” (Staniland, 2025). Expert analysis from International IDEA’s 2025 Global State of Democracy Report supports this, positing that these uprisings reveal the core weaknesses of hybrid regimes, where economic triggers like regional inflation of 15-20% and the potent role of youth in digital mobilization consistently outpace the state’s capacity to adapt (International IDEA, 2025).

While counterarguments in outlets like Eurasia Review suggest external geopolitical proxies (e.g., from India or the U.S.) exploit these grievances rather than organic economic factors (Eurasia Review, 2025), rebuttals from the UN OHCHR emphasize internal repression and youth agency, citing evidence from 2025 probes that identify state violence as the primary escalator (OHCHR, 2025b).

The academic conclusion, therefore, is that the shared economic and youth dynamics across Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh signal a profound regional shift, necessitating genuine inclusive reforms to break these cycles of unrest (Staniland, 2025; Al Jazeera, 2025a). A systematic comparison of key variables elucidates this common syndrome. The primary economic triggers were severe across all three cases: Nepal (2025) faced youth unemployment of 20.8% and corruption scandals despite remittances constituting 24% of GDP (World Bank, 2025b); Sri Lanka (2022) was crippled by a debt crisis of 110% of GDP and catastrophic fuel and food shortages (Carnegie Endowment, 2025); and Bangladesh (2024) erupted over job quota injustices, high inflation at 15%, and pervasive corruption (CPD, 2025).

The role of youth was pivotal and defining: Nepal saw Gen Z leaderless protests resulting in 72 deaths (OHCHR, 2025a); Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya movement was youth-led and ousted the Rajapaksa regime (AP News, 2025); and Bangladesh’s movement began with student-led quota reforms that escalated into a full regime change (Phys.org, 2025).

The use of digital media was a critical accelerant: In Nepal, the government’s ban on platforms ironically sparked massive mobilization on Discord and Instagram (Staniland, 2025); in Sri Lanka, social media was instrumental in amplifying protests (Indian Express, 2025a); and in Bangladesh, hashtags and online campaigns unified the movement (Daily Star, 2025). Finally, the state response followed a familiar pattern of failed repression: Nepal deployed lethal force and the army, leading to Oli’s resignation (UN News, 2025a); Sri Lanka’s crackdowns failed, resulting in the government’s ouster (Carnegie Endowment, 2025); and Bangladesh responded with repression and abuses, leading to Hasina’s exile (OHCHR, 2025c).


Synthesizing these findings leads to a powerful theory of hybrid regime vulnerability. Major claims theorize that South Asia’s hybrid regimes, which blend democratic facades with authoritarian controls, are acutely prone to collapse under a common syndrome: the confluence of deep-seated economic grievances, sophisticated digital mobilization, and persistent elite intransigence (Staniland, 2025; International IDEA, 2025).

Academic arguments frame this as a regional vulnerability model where weak institutions fundamentally fail to absorb the shocks delivered by youth-led digital uprisings (Nature, 2025; IMF, 2025a). Latest statistics from the V-Dem Institute’s 2025 Democracy Report illustrate the region’s autocratization trends, with hybrid regimes scoring a weak 0.4-0.6 on democracy indices, a situation exacerbated by GDP growth rates of 5-6% that are utterly insufficient to address youth unemployment hovering around 20% (V-Dem, 2025).

This syndrome was vividly displayed in Bangladesh’s 2024 fall due to quota grievances amplified online, Sri Lanka’s 2022 debt-fueled protests, and Nepal’s 2025 crisis ignited by a ban that exposed elite disconnect (Samvada World, 2025; World Bank, 2025c). As a Nepalese official admitted in a moment of crisis on September 8, 2025, “Economic discontent fueled digital unrest” (UN News, 2025b).

Bangladeshi interim adviser Muhammad Yunus reflected in February 2025 that “Repression deepened vulnerabilities” (OHCHR, 2025d), and Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake noted that “Youth digital power exposed intransigence” (Carnegie Endowment, 2025). Expert analysis from the IMF’s 2025 regional report extends this theory, positing that elite intransigence in such hybrids systematically amplifies grievances through digital channels, leading to rapid dissent as seen in Nepal’s 48-hour collapse (IMF, 2025b).

Although counterarguments claim external actors drive this vulnerability (Eurasia Review, 2025), rebuttals by V-Dem cite robust data on endogenous autocratization (V-Dem, 2025). In synthesizing the arguments this intertwined syndrome renders hybrid regimes exceptionally vulnerable, urgently necessitating genuine institutional strengthening to mitigate these recurring and destructive cycles of dissent.
Conclusion

The fall of the Nepali government in September 2025 was not a sudden anomaly but the culmination of profound and protracted systemic failures. This research set out to determine the core reasons behind this collapse, moving beyond the immediate trigger of the social media ban to examine the deeper structural decay that made the state so vulnerable. The primary objective was to critically assess the causal weight of long-term political and economic grievances against the short-term catalytic miscalculation, and to situate Nepal’s experience within the broader context of South Asia’s ongoing political upheavals.


The analysis reveals a clear and compelling narrative: Nepal’s political architecture had been hollowed out by years of chronic instability, elite capture, and a culture of impunity, while its economic foundation was crippled by youth unemployment, remittance dependency, and mass emigration. This created a tinderbox of generational despair. The government’s decision to impose a social media ban was a profound strategic error, a classic case of a hybrid regime misreading the power of digital-native citizens. Rather than suppressing dissent, the ban and the subsequent lethal state response acted as a spark, transforming discrete grievances into a unified nationwide demand for systemic change.

The movement’s leaderless, digital-first morphology, powered by potent narratives against corruption and elite privilege, proved uniquely resilient and effective at mobilizing dissent, ultimately overwhelming the state’s capacity to respond with anything but force. Theoretically, Nepal’s case significantly advances our understanding of hybrid regime vulnerability. It demonstrates that the confluence of economic distress, digital mobilization, and elite intransigence creates a predictable syndrome that can lead to rapid political collapse. This challenges frameworks that prioritize either purely institutional or purely economic explanations, arguing instead for an integrated approach that accounts for the agency of digitally empowered generations.

The events in Nepal, following similar patterns in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, suggest a regional shift in how political authority is contested and lost, highlighting the diminishing returns of authoritarian repression in the digital age. In final reflection, the September 2025 uprising stands as a powerful testament to a generation’s refusal to accept a failed status quo. It underscores a harsh truth for elites in fragile democracies: technical governance and periodic elections are insufficient without genuine accountability and inclusive economic opportunity. The interim government’s challenge, and indeed the challenge for the entire region, is to move beyond restoring order to rebuilding a social contract that has been shattered. The legacy of this revolt will be determined not by the fall of a single government, but by whether it finally catalyzes the structural reforms that Nepal’s youth have so decisively demanded.

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About Abdul Wasi Popalzay
Abdul Wasi Popalzay is a doctoral researcher in Political Science and International Relations at the Central University of Punjab, India. His doctoral research examines the changing dynamics of Afghanistan–Pakistan relations in the post-U.S. withdrawal era, with a focus on major power engagement. His research interests include regional security complexes, great power foreign policy behavior, South and Central Asian geopolitics, and post-conflict diplomacy. He previously completed postgraduate research on the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict from a geopolitical perspective. He was recognized as Best Research Scholar (2025) by the Central University of Punjab.
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About Yugdeep Airi
Yugdeep Airi is a political analyst and researcher specializing in international relations, with a focus on South and Central Asia, narrative warfare, media representation of conflicts, and geopolitics. He recently completed his Ph.D. at Central University of Punjab, where his dissertation examined "Narrative Warfare: A Comparative Analysis of Russia-Ukraine War Representation in International Media Outlets" under the supervision of faculty in the Department of South and Central Asian Studies.
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