“Soon there will be no younger to carry our coffins,” laments the elected official of a Nepalese people hit by the “Generation Z” exodus, which demonstrated last week to protest corruption and unemployment.
One hour by Katmandú car, Pharphing concentrates the difficulties that led the young Nepals to let their anger explode.
20% of children aged 15-24
According to the last official evaluation, the repression of the demonstrations and the riots that caused the fall, last week, ended with at least 72 dead. Many statements of protesters, access to employment is the first. The latest estimates of the World Bank reveal that more than 20% of 15-24 year olds were unemployed in 2024. To the comparison, in France, unemployment for 15-24-year-old children is 19% in the second quarter of 2025, according to INSEE. In the absence of factories, the young people of Pharping work in agriculture as seasonal workers, just more than two months a year.
31 years, Santosh Sunar has already worked for a while in Bangalore, in southern India. Without having found a job in the country, he knows that he will surely have to go abroad. “It’s hard to live far from my wife,” waitress in Dubai, “and it will be even more difficult to leave my mother and daughter,” he already anticipates the father.
839,000 expatriates abroad
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Nepaleses are forced to expatriate to find work in India or the Middle East. Last year, this number reached 839,000, according to Nepalese government statistics. Transfers of funds from abroad have become vital for Nepal’s economy. In 2024, they represented a third of their gross domestic product, the fourth highest rate in the world, according to the World Bank. To the head of the new provisional government responsible for taking the elections to the country next March, the former head of the Supreme Court, Sushila Karki, undertakes to respond to the demands of young protesters.
“I did not go to Katmandú (to prove), but completely support his statements,” says Santosh Sunar. His mother, Maya Sonar, 48, does not hide his sadness of the idea of seeing his son start again. “I understand,” he rushes to add, “young people have no choice.” Kamala Sunar, her 40 -year -old neighbor, is also preparing to see her older daughter Rakshya, 27, a single mother of a two -year -old girl, takes the way to exile. His child, 24 -year -old Diksha, already lives in Dubai, where she is a clean woman. “She advised me not to follow her example because the schedules are very heavy and the difficult living conditions,” explains Rakshya. “But what life can I offer my daughter here? There is nothing.”
Source: BFM TV
