Securitizing Youth Dissent: A Comparative Analysis of the Bangladesh July Revolution and the Nepal Gen Z Uprising, 2024–2026

Abstract

This paper examines the 2024 Bangladesh July Revolution and the 2025 Nepal Gen Z uprising as twin instances of youth-driven political rupture in South Asia. Although triggered by distinct grievances, a discriminatory job quota system in Bangladesh and a sweeping social media ban in Nepal, both crises reveal a shared underlying logic: state responses that treat digitally native youth populations as existential security threats tend to accelerate rather than contain unrest. Drawing on Classical Defense Realism and the Copenhagen School Securitization framework, the paper argues that when regimes reframe economic or accountability demands as existential threats to sovereignty, the resulting emergency measures generate an internal security dilemma that erodes the very legitimacy they are meant to protect. The comparative approach highlights how demographic pressure, digital dependency, and longstanding democratic backsliding converged to produce rapid regime change in both countries. By tracing the historical roots, theoretical mechanisms, and post-uprising political trajectories in Bangladesh and Nepal, this study offers a broader framework for understanding youth-led uprisings elsewhere in the Global South.