2025 Timor-Leste protests in the context of Kmanek Haburas Unidade Nasional Timor Oan

The Gen Z protests have occurred in many different countries since the 2010s. The protests in Bangladesh in 2024 are widely cited as the first successful Gen Z revolution in the world, inspiring similar Gen Z-led protests in other Asian countries including Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines, Timor-Leste, and the Maldives, as well as in other parts of the world. The protests begun in Asia, in what has been described as the Asian Spring, but in 2025, the protests spread to Africa and other places. To date, the earliest known use of the term was in an opinion piece by French market research company Ipsos, which was named "OK boomer!" and published on 8 December 2019, referring to the Fridays for Future 2019 protests.

Although the causes of the protests are different in each country, they have generally been in response to inequality, declining standards of living, corruption, democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. Social media has been a common tool for activism and coordination. Some protests, like in Bangladesh and Nepal, have resulted in the overthrow of national governments.

Since the early 2020s, a series of mostly Generation Z-led anti-government protests and uprisings have spread across South and Southeast Asia, with several leading to massive reforms and regime change. These protests began as a response to widespread corruption, nepotism, economic inequality and mismanagement, authoritarianism, and democratic backsliding. The protests in Bangladesh in 2024 are widely cited as the first successful Gen Z revolution in the world, inspiring similar Gen Z-led protests in other Asian countries including Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, and the Maldives. Governments were overthrown in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal; while protests in Indonesia and Timor-Leste achieved reversals of unpopular policies.