A Movement in the Making?

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which claimed to represent the youth and empower them to bring about qualitative change in Pakistan, has faced intense state repression and internal disarray since losing power in April 2022 following a vote of no confidence. PTI’s founding chairman, Imran Khan, has been imprisoned since August 2023 and remains a central figure in the country’s political turmoil. On November 26, 2024, PTI supporters, many of them young people, gathered in Islamabad to stage a major protest demanding Khan’s release. Demonstrators reached the D-Chowk area and clashed with security forces amid a heavy security deployment, tear gas, arrests, and reports of casualties. Punjab also witnessed extensive state action against PTI supporters. The coalition government led by the PML-N and PPP, seeking to retain power and prevent PTI’s political resurgence, has been accused by PTI and its supporters of aligning with the Establishment to suppress dissent and restrict the party’s political space.

When 25 million children remain out of school and intolerance is fostered in parts of the religious education system, how can Pakistan’s Gen Z acquire the awareness, cohesion, and organisational strength necessary to drive meaningful political and social change?

According to an article titled “Pakistan’s Gen Z Hits a Wall of Inflation, Unemployment, Censorship – Feature,” published in The Jerusalem Post on January 26, 2026: “With about 60% of its population under the age of 30, Pakistan is facing a generational test that may prove decisive for its economic, political, and social future. Generation Z—the country’s largest and most digitally connected cohort—has the potential to reshape the nation’s trajectory. But that potential is colliding with a combination of economic stagnation, political uncertainty, and growing restrictions on expression, pushing many young people toward disengagement or emigration. Often described by policymakers as a ‘youth bulge,’ Pakistan’s young population is coming of age in a period marked less by optimism than by caution. Youth unemployment remains high, inflation has steadily eroded purchasing power, and secure jobs in the formal sector are increasingly difficult to find.”

A ‘ripe moment’ therefore prevails in Pakistan for mobilising Gen Z around a mass movement to challenge corruption, nepotism, severe price increases, bad governance, the absence of the rule of law, youth brain drain, and other systemic problems.

The question of whether Pakistan is approaching its own Gen Z moment needs to be analysed from three angles. First, Pakistan has no established history of youth-led mass movements for democracy, the rule of law, and economic empowerment. Political parties have launched movements in Pakistan, including those in 1968, 1977, and 1983, demanding democracy and protesting electoral rigging, but these movements were ultimately hijacked and culminated in the imposition of martial law. The youth have never played a leading role in bringing about sustained social and political change in Pakistan. The lawyers’ movement of 2007 and the PTI-led movement following its ouster from power in April 2022 also failed to produce lasting positive results.

This means that Gen Z in Pakistan, despite its demographic strength, lacks the will, determination, planning, charisma, and leadership needed to effect social and political change. Second, unlike Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India, the deep state in Pakistan, because of its decades-long hold over political power, has been able to neutralise the younger population. Gen Z in Pakistan is divided along ethnic, class, and sectarian lines, and whenever there is a possibility of young people mobilising around a movement against the status quo, the deep state takes measures to suppress that potential by exploiting ethnic, linguistic, class, and sectarian divisions. As a result, Pakistan’s Gen Z, instead of acting as a coherent force, remains divided and largely indifferent to the issues contributing to serious economic and governance crises.

Finally, based on historical and contemporary evidence, there appears to be little likelihood that Gen Z in Pakistan will launch a mass movement for democracy, political pluralism, good governance, the rule of law, and accountability, or to address the frustration, anger, antagonism, and intolerance among young people. Compared with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India, the deep-state structures in Pakistan are so entrenched that nonconformist elements, particularly those led by young people, lack the organisational capacity to mobilise and assert themselves effectively. Pakistan’s low literacy rate and limited levels of human and social development also negatively affect its youth population. When 25 million children remain out of school and intolerance is fostered in parts of the religious education system, how can Pakistan’s Gen Z acquire the awareness, cohesion, and organisational strength necessary to drive meaningful political and social change?

Based on the aforementioned facts and analysis, one cannot reasonably expect a significant mobilisation of Pakistan’s Gen Z in the near future, despite the fact that conditions appear ripe for youth assertion. The iron is hot, and young people could potentially play a leadership role in transforming Pakistan for the better in the years to come. One must also bear in mind that the Arab Spring of 2011, which was driven in part by young people in Egypt, failed to eradicate the country’s authoritarian political culture, while the uprisings in Libya and Syria that same year, driven largely by popular opposition to authoritarian rule, ultimately contributed to prolonged instability and conflict in both countries.