Nepal Gen-Z Protests 2025: A series of US-funded programmes had been allegedly operating inside Nepal for years before the country’s violent “anti-corruption” Gen-Z protest in September 2025 that toppled the country’s elected government, revealed purported leaked documents, accessed by website The Grayzone.
What appears on record is a picture of a foreign-backed push that unfolded through workshops, grants, focus groups and digital grooming sessions long before protesters, comprising Generation Z students, young citizens and activists, armed themselves and poured into the streets.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its affiliate, the International Republican Institute (IRI), as per the documents, trained groups in strategies and skills in organising protest demonstrations, political messaging and digital mobilisation.
These activities were allegedly underway well before then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resigned and the clashes that left at least 76 people dead.
The IRI’s internal paperwork allegedly describes a plan to build a youthful political “network” that would “become an important force to support US interests”. It highlights how the institute linked “vibrant youth… and political leaders” and delivered “comprehensive trainings on how to launch advocacy campaigns and protests”.
Every protest theme, according to the documents, would be aligned with “issues selected” by the IRI and its local partners so that “the U.S. concerns with Nepal’s democracy [would] be resolved”.
This method had precedent. A similar IRI-backed push in Bangladesh had helped trigger a coup in August 2024 that is mentioned in the leaks.
The ‘Gen Z’ Fury
The protests that tore through the country followed the government’s decision to block access to Facebook, YouTube and X (Twitter) until the social media companies agreed to register under local law. Teenagers and young adults flooded public spaces with smartphones, livestreams and, in many cases, semi-automatic rifles.
Images circulated across social media showed the Jolly Roger flag from the anime One Piece flying above crowds. The emblem had already appeared in youth uprisings in Indonesia, the Philippines and Mexico. Each of those countries falls in an area of strategic interest to Washington and Beijing, a detail that was not lost on regional observers.
Oli resigned within a week of the violence. Days after, Nepal’s interim leader took over through an anonymous online poll hosted on Discord, a vote that registered fewer than 10,000 responses.
Western media described the outburst as a democratic awakening, but the leaked files point to a much more complex backdrop, one in which alleged outside actors had already spent years preparing restless young Nepalis for political confrontation.
Why Nepal Became A Priority Target
Washington’s interest in Nepal is written across the leaked IRI documents. The institute stressed that Nepal’s “strategic geographic location” between China and India allegedly made the country “core” to the US “Indo-Pacific” agenda. The programme’s suspected designers allegedly believed that fostering a politically emboldened youth class in Kathmandu could help tilt Nepal toward a future desired by American policymakers.
The files describe initiatives that allegedly aimed to guide young citizens who would “use their power for policy intervention” and influence “national decision-making”. The alleged expectation was that their influence would stretch “beyond the life” of the projects. The purported long-term vision went beyond protests. It allegedly included creating new political parties, running candidates and eventually influencing a future government.
The “Enough is Enough” protests of 2020, which erupted against the country’s COVID-era restrictions, allegedly served as a case study for suspected IRI strategists. They saw those demonstrations as evidence that young Nepalis held enough energy and organisation to “shape and play a significant role in Nepali politics”.
The institute’s alleged mission became to “sustain” that momentum by giving youths “opportunities and platforms to develop extensive and sustainable networks” that would champion “democratic change supported by the United States”.
The NED has allegedly acknowledged over the years that many of its activities mirror the covert interventions once carried out by the CIA. One of the organisation’s founders even said that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”.
With India’s foreign policy tilting further toward China and Russia in recent years, the files suggest that Washington saw Nepal, a geographically small but strategically positioned country, as a place where a friendly government could prove invaluable.
How A $350,000 Youth Project Created Political Foot Soldiers
One of the most important alleged US-funded ventures in Nepal was the IRI’s Yuva Netritwa: Paradarshi Niti (Youth Leadership: Transparent Policy) programme. It was reportedly in force from July 2021 to June 2022 at a cost of $350,000. The goal, as the documents state, was to give “emerging leaders (an) increased opportunity to build momentum for youth activism and put pressure on Nepali political decision-makers”.
The programme allegedly targeted between 60 and 70 young Nepalis. The focus was allegedly to groom a generation able to launch “advocacy campaigns and protests” that would bring “political turmoil, government corruption and national policymaking” into the spotlight.
As soon as a sufficient number of youths who “endorse and advocate” US “values” had been identified, the plan allegedly called for mobilising them into campaigns on issues of “US concern”.
To boost this alleged effort, the IRI reportedly deployed the Emerging Leaders Academy (ELA), an initiative designed to bring together activists and junior political leaders. The institute allegedly bragged that similar efforts in Sri Lanka and Indonesia had succeeded in preparing hand-selected youths to take up influential posts in their communities and parties.
Applications were allegedly invited across political groups, civil society bodies and even the media. Participants were allegedly trained to build effective protests, craft messages and use social media to draw in more young people.
The alleged long-term goal was that the young participants would be encouraged “to strive for higher positions in (their) respective political parties”, ultimately forming a “youth network” with influence over national decision-making.
In 2021, the IRI allegedly applied for another $500,000 to expand its civic education work. Internal research allegedly highlighted that 90% of young Nepalis were disengaged from politics, even though they made up 40% of the population.
That demographic weight allegedly made them indispensable to any plan aligned with the US Indo-Pacific strategy. Whether the funds were eventually granted is unknown.
Workshops, Manuals And A Parallel Training Machinery
The organisation’s reach allegedly extended far beyond a single programme. The leaked documents show how the IRI built a broader training ecosystem that brought in young Nepalis, both politically active and apolitical, to “strengthen their capacity to make positive change”.
They were allegedly taught public speaking, strategic messaging, resource mobilisation and the management of advocacy campaigns and protests.
Participants allegedly studied global examples of youth-led political change. They were coached to “exercise leadership” and trained in ways young leaders could drive political change “through protest”.
The alleged final training module introduced digital techniques to collect data, track public concerns and funnel them into online campaigns using tools recommended by experts in IRI’s Digital Democracy practice.
Embedded within this alleged machinery was a detailed and professionally managed focus group operation. The IRI allegedly hired the Kathmandu-based firm Solutions Consultant to run seven focus groups from February to April 2022.
The alleged aim was to understand barriers that kept young Nepalis from entering politics. The firm was allegedly paid $9,135 for this work. Participants aged 18 to 35 were allegedly recorded, transcribed in full and indexed by name or number, along with their age, education, city and occupation.
Interviewees allegedly expressed dissatisfaction with Nepal’s political class. A 24-year-old man said the Congress Party used “youth during demonstrations” and then ignored them later.
A representative from the Bibeksheel Sajha Party said “capable youth are kept out of meaningful politics and are only used to bolster the demonstrations and riots” staged by older leaders. These grievances mirrored the very sentiments the IRI allegedly intended to channel toward broader mobilisation.
How Those Fault Lines Shattered Kathmandu
The dynamics revealed in the research resurfaced explosively in 2025. The very patterns of mobilisation, young protesters erupting over unpopular policies, a political system unable to absorb their anger, and older leaders who benefited from street-level disruption played out during the Gen-Z unrest.
The New York Times captured the mood in a September 15 editorial, stating that “Nepalis from all walks of life were ready to reject the system they had fought for decades to achieve”, but were left without “any clear sense of what comes next”.
That uncertainty has since opened space for pro-monarchy forces that once seemed buried in history. Arsonists attacked parliament, party offices and leaders’ homes during the unrest. The army and the former royal palace were not touched.
Former king Gyanendra Shah issued a statement backing the protesters, and the army has since invited pro-monarchist people into talks about the country’s political future.
The leaks now raise troubling questions. If the IRI’s trainings, youth mapping and protest coaching helped form the activists who filled Kathmandu’s streets, the United States may have helped open the path for a political order more favourable to its own Indo-Pacific ambitions.
A new leader allegedly chosen through an anonymous Discord poll stands at the centre of this moment, symbolising a country unsettled by a rebellion powered by smartphones, online symbols and years of discreet tutoring from a distant capital.
Whether Washington achieved what it envisioned remains to be seen. What is clear is that Nepal’s most transformative upheaval in years allegedly did not grow spontaneously. The unrest carried the imprint of a long-running project that blended alleged foreign funding, youth discontent, digital culture and geopolitical calculation into a volatile formula that finally exploded on the streets of Kathmandu.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: ZEE News
