Youth
Thousands of young Nepalis have taken to the streets to protest their government over a ban on social media platforms. The protests have garnered national attention as Prime Minister Sharma Oli resigned, and the Nepali parliament was set on fire.
Rudabeh Shahid, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, told Newsweek the protests are a "generational reckoning against a culture of political impunity in the South Asian region as a whole."
Why It Matters
Nepal, the Himalayan nation that borders both China and India and is home to 30 million people, has faced years of political upheaval. While the protests directly follow the ban on social media, protesters say years of government corruption and failure to provide young people with economic opportunities are at the heart of the unrest.
At least 22 people have died and hundreds of others have been injured in the unrest.
Afghan women and girls are bearing some of the heaviest burdens of a deadly 6.0 magnitude earthquake in the country’s eastern provinces last week.
Already faced with cultural and legal barriers due to Taliban’s harsh restrictions, reports show the natural disaster has intensified the situation for Afghan women, who are impeded from accessing hospital care and other support.
As victims were pulled from the rubble in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, reports have been made that many women were left trapped by male rescuers due to a prohibition on physical contact between unrelated men and women.
Current reports from the United Nations show that nearly 40,000 people have been impacted by the earthquake, while over 5,000 homes have been destroyed.
At least 19 people have been killed and dozens injured during violent protests against the government’s social media ban and alleged corruption in Nepal, according to authorities and local media, as police fired live rounds at young protesters and used tear gas and rubber bullets on them.
On Monday, some protesters forced their way into the Parliament complex in the capital, Kathmandu, by breaking through a barricade, a local official said.
One protester told the ANI news agency that the police had been firing “indiscriminately”.
“[They] fired bullets which missed me but hit a friend who was standing behind me. He was hit in the hand,” the protester said.
Seven people died at the National Trauma Centre, chief medical superintendent Dr Badri Rijal told The Associated Press news agency.
“Many of them are in serious condition and appear to have been shot in the head and chest,” Rijal said.
Families waited anxiously outside for news of their relatives while people gathered to donate blood.
Today, UN Women is releasing new data which shows that, despite this ban, the vast majority of Afghans – women and men alike – support girls’ education.
In a nationwide, door-to-door survey of more than 2,000 Afghans, more than 9 out of 10 said it was important for girls to continue their schooling.
Support was overwhelming across the board: from men and women, in both urban and rural communities.
It is clear: Despite the existing bans, the Afghan people want their daughters to exercise their right to education.
In a country where half the population lives in poverty, education is the difference between despair and possibility.
These findings can be found in a new UN Women Gender Alert, spotlighting the normalization of the women’s rights crisis in Afghanistan, four years after the Taliban takeover. The Gender Alert comes one year after the so-called morality law’ codified a sweeping set of restrictions on women and girls.
The Gender Alert also looked at the Taliban’s ban on women working for NGOs – announced nearly three years ago. Its impact is devastating.
In a nationwide, door-to-door survey of more than 2,000 Afghans, 92 per cent said it was “important” for girls to continue their schooling, with support cutting across rural and urban communities.
Among rural populations, 87 per cent of men and 95 per cent of women supported girls’ schooling, while in urban areas the figure was 95 per cent for both men and women.
“This is almost always the first thing girls tell us – they are desperate to learn and just want the chance to gain an education,” said UN Women’s Special Representative in Afghanistan, Susan Ferguson.
“Families also say they want their daughters to have that dream. They know that literacy and learning can change the trajectory of a girl’s life, in a country where half the population is living in poverty.”
In areas where the Taliban ban on women working for NGOs is reportedly enforced, in a separate UN Women telesurvey from July and August 2025, 97 per cent of women surveyed reported that the ban has had a negative impact on their day-to-day lives.
Sunita Dangol’s story didn’t begin with privilege or political lineage. Born in Kathmandu to a farming family from the historically marginalized Newar community, she was only able to complete her schooling thanks to a hard-earned scholarship.
Her drive shaped every step that followed. Dangol became the youngest member of Kathmandu’s city planning commission and soon joined the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Kathmandu Hub, championing civic participation among young people.
At 29, she ran for Deputy Mayor of Kathmandu and won by the largest margin in the city’s elections.
This International Youth Day, 12 August 2025, under the theme Local Youth Actions for the SDGs and Beyond, we spotlight stories like Dangol’s, where young changemakers across South Asia are solving the region’s challenges, one city at a time.
Plan International Australia, in collaboration with YouGov, conducted a poll with a representative online sample of 1,034 Australian young women aged between 18 and 24 to gauge their views on the culture and diversity of representation in Australian politics. Around 26% of respondents identified as being from a Culturally and Linguistically diverse (CALD) background, around 24% identified as LGBTQI+ and around 14% identified as having a disability. The theoretical margin of error on a sample of this size is ±3.05 percentage points. Due to rounding, totals for results may not add to 100.
Click here to access the report.
Young people care – about our planet, our future and our political systems. In the last decade, young people have initiated social movements, tackling issues that impact their own lives and those of communities around the globe. They have done so with hope and optimism about the future, at a time when we face extreme challenges. In a world where global conflict, climate change and socio-economic issues are becoming ever more acute, we need young people’s fresh perspectives to guide political decision-making.
This report aims to outline how and why young people engage in political decision- making, and the challenges that sometimes prevent them from doing so. It puts forward policy and legislation recommendations for advancing the needs and rights of young people, ensuring their voices are meaningfully heard in public life and decision- making. The research from The Body Shop International and the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth supports the Be Seen Be Heard campaign. Launching in 2022, this global campaign aims to increase young people’s participation in political arenas and help make their voices heard across all spheres of public life.
The objective of the campaign is to seek to inspire a change in legislation or policy, or support initiatives, to promote youth participation in political life in all 75+ countries where The Body Shop operates.
Click here to access the report.
Driven by the shared belief that all young voices should be heard, Raise Our Voice Australia has proudly partnered with The Body Shop Australia to ask young women and gender diverse Australians about their political engagement.
With just under 500 responses, this research captured their reflections on media reporting and politics, and the impact this has on their political actions.
Click here to access the report.
Our 2020 data showed that young Asian women, young Black women, and young Latinas were more likely to talk politics, participate in elections, and fight racism.
In recent years, as youth have increased their civic and political participation both in the streets and at the ballot box, young women have often led the charge. In the 2020 election, we estimated voter turnout among young women was 55%, compared to 44% among young men. But, just as young people overall are not a monolith and differences in views or engagement among men and women, for example, are crucial to understand, there is also diversity among young women—especially by race/ethnicity.
Click here to read the full article published by Circle on 3 February 2022.
By Angela L. Bos, Jill S. Greenlee, Mirya R. Holman, Zoe M. Oxley and J. Celeste Lay
This article develops and tests a new theoretical framework, gendered political socialization, which offers important insights into how children perceive gender in politics and the consequences of these perceptions on sex differences in political interest and ambition. Based on data from 1,604 children who live in four different regions across the United States, we find that children not only perceive politics to be a male-dominated space, but with age, girls increasingly see political leadership as a “man’s world.” Simultaneously, as children grow older, they internalize gendered expectations, which direct their interests toward professions that embody the gendered traits that fit with their own sex. One result of this mismatch between women and politics is that girls express lower levels of interest and ambition in politics than do boys.
Click here to read the full article.
By Lucas Ledwaba
Statistics suggest women and youth dominate the country’s population, but with the local government election just weeks away the question of their participation in decision making remains a contested issue.
The Independent Electoral Commission’s announcement that the voter registration process for the upcoming election has elicited a good response from young persons augurs well for efforts that counter youth voter apathy.
This issue has been consistently raised in previous municipal elections, with the general feeling being that youth are not playing the active role they should be on this front.
Click here to read the full article published by Mail & Guardian on 21 October 2021.