The tear gas drifts slowly, almost lazily, before it burns. In Kathmandu’s narrow streets, where vendors usually sell fruit and schoolchildren trail home with worn satchels, the air this week has been carved by smoke and sirens. It is not only the protesters who scatter when the riot police charge. Children, some barely taller than the shields they face, have become unwilling witnesses, sometimes victims, of a state losing patience with dissent. At first, the protests were expected, a familiar churn of voices against rising inflation, unemployment, and corruption. The marches surged through the capital, angry but expectant, carrying the rhythm of civic unrest that Nepal has known before. But then came the batons. Then came the images, teenagers bloodied at the mouth, a child no older than twelve coughing through gas, small hands pressed to burning eyes. The line between protester and passerby collapsed in the chaos, and with it collapsed the government’s claim to restraint.
To be a child in Nepal is already to inherit a fragile democracy. Many of today’s demonstrators are the sons and daughters of those who once marched against monarchy, who endured war and waited for promises of a republic that too often faltered. These are the same children who should have been in classrooms, in playgrounds, in futures. Instead, they are learning what it means when a state turns its force indiscriminately outward, erasing age, innocence, and the most basic protections. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Nepal more than three decades ago, does not equivocate. Children must be shielded from violence, from exploitation, from the blunt machinery of politics. Yet this week, in Kathmandu’s streets, the principles inked into international law dissolved into acrid smoke.
“We were just walking home,” one teenager told a local reporter, his shirt still stained from the spray of a water cannon. “They didn’t see children. They just saw a crowd.”
Perhaps the most chilling aspect is the quiet. International responses have been slow, even muted. Statements from rights organizations express concern, but concern is a threadbare word against the bruises on young skin. Where is the outrage that should accompany the sight of children gassed, chased, and beaten in the heart of a democracy? Nepal is not an isolated stage. What happens in its streets sets precedents for how far governments can go when cornered, how easily children can be made invisible in the calculus of force. The silence, too, is dangerous. It suggests that the violence against children is negotiable, excusable, even normal. But the moment we normalize state violence against its youngest, the moral spine of democracy bends.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect is the quiet. International responses have been slow, even muted. Statements from rights organizations express concern, but concern is a threadbare word against the bruises on young skin.
The image of a child doubled over in a cloud of state-issued smoke is not simply a breach of law. It is a betrayal of the very premise of governance, that the state exists to protect its people, not pulverize them into obedience. The use of force against protesters is itself contentious. The use of force against children is indefensible. And yet, here we are, the playground folded into the protest ground, the future folded into fear. These children may never forget the sting of gas, the shove of a boot, the crack of a baton. What remains to be seen is whether the adults in power, and the world watching, will remember that every democratic promise collapses if it cannot even promise safety to its youngest.
This protest began with a government ban on social media, an order that attempted to silence dissent by shutting down the very spaces where Nepal’s youth speak most freely. But blocking apps did not still voices. It drove them into the streets. Schoolchildren in uniforms and college students with flags in hand poured into the capital, chanting not only for their feeds but for their futures. They pushed against barbed wire barricades, scaled Parliament gates, and confronted riot police in scenes more reminiscent of civil war than civic protest. Fires licked at government buildings, smoke curled into the city’s air, and the chants hardened into defiance: shut down corruption, not social media. The state’s response was swift and brutal. Tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and eventually live rounds. By nightfall, nineteen people were dead, including a twelve-year-old child. More than four hundred were injured. The Ministry of Health confirmed that it was Nepal’s deadliest day of unrest since 2006, when weeks of protest finally ended the monarchy. This time, it is the republic itself that trembles.
The political fallout followed just as quickly. Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned within hours, stepping down on what he called moral grounds after bearing responsibility for the bloodshed. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli soon followed, offering his resignation in what he described as an effort to pave the way for a political solution. President Ramchandra Paudel accepted his departure and began the process of appointing a new leader. Yet for the grieving families, resignation speeches offered little comfort. The streets remained restless, littered with the evidence of a government at war with its youth. Protesters defied an indefinite curfew, torching the parliament building and storming the offices and residences of senior politicians. Kathmandu’s international airport was closed as the unrest spilled into the country’s most vital arteries. Mayor Balendra Shah urged restraint, telling demonstrators that their fight should not descend further into violence. “Your murderer has resigned,” he said, a sentence at once consoling and incendiary.
UNICEF’s South Asia office finally broke the silence in blunt terms. “UNICEF is deeply alarmed by reports of violence against children during today’s protests across Nepal,” its statement read. “The use of force against children is unacceptable and must stop immediately.” It reminded the government of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which enshrines every child’s right to freedom of association and peaceful assembly. Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission echoed the call, urging restraint and demanding relief, compensation, and investigations. Yet protests carried into the night, their chants echoing the conviction that bruises do not erase anger and tear gas does not dissolve memory. If anything, they sharpen it.
For those of us watching from across the region, there is an eerie familiarity. In Sri Lanka, the Aragalaya began with youth as well, with chants against corruption and a government deaf to its people. We saw how public squares transformed into symbols of resistance, how violence only widened the chasm between rulers and ruled. We saw how tear gas could not dampen resolve, how the youngest citizens carried the heaviest weight of a state’s betrayal.
Nepal’s protests, like Sri Lanka’s, are about more than economics or apps. They are about dignity. When that dignity is denied even to children, the crisis is no longer just political. It is human. There is still time for Nepal to step back, to restrain, to remember that children are not threats but the measure of a nation’s soul. For Nepal, for any country, the question is not only how to govern dissent, but how to govern humanity. And right now, the world must look at Nepal and say, without hesitation, this is unacceptable.
