Global Protest Wave 2026: Inside the Unrest Reshaping Nepal, Kashmir, India, Tunisia and Colombia
Five countries across three continents are living through some form of political rupture this summer. In Kathmandu, a government that survived one uprising is now managing a second, smaller fire.
In the mountains of Pakistan administered Kashmir, an election has become a body count. In New Delhi, a satirical youth party forced a cabinet minister to resign. In Tunis, tens of thousands marked five years of one man's rule with a single demand: that he leave.
And in Bogota, a president who spent his final weeks in office calling citizens into the streets has now handed power to a rival who won it at the ballot box, not the barricade.
None of these five crises share a single cause. But together they trace the same fault line running under 2026: publics that no longer accept the gap between what governments promise and what they deliver, and states that are struggling to respond with anything other than force, delay or denial.
Why Protests Are Erupting Across the Globe in 2026
The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report for 2026 named inequality and weakened governance among the most interconnected threats to global stability, a finding that tracks closely with what is happening on the ground in each of these five countries.
World At Net's own analysis of 2026 geopolitics described the year's defining feature not as collapse but as fragility, a system too interconnected to break apart suddenly but too strained to fully stabilise. Protest movements are one of the clearest symptoms of that strain.
What separates 2026 from earlier protest cycles is speed. Nepal's Gen Z uprising in September 2025 toppled a government in five days. India's Cockroach Janta Party grew from an online joke into the largest youth mobilisation of Narendra Modi's decade in power within weeks.
Pakistan administered Kashmir's protest movement, which began as a dispute over reserved assembly seats, has produced dozens of deaths since June. Digital organising, economic frustration and a generation raised online but governed offline are the common threads.
Nepal: Religious Tension Tests a Fragile Political Recovery
Nepal's political story in 2026 was supposed to be one of recovery. The September 2025 protests, sparked by a government ban on 26 social media platforms, killed at least 73 people and forced Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli's resignation.
An interim government led by former chief justice Sushila Karki organised early elections, and in March 2026 voters chose 35 year old Balen Shah, a rapper turned Kathmandu mayor, as the country's youngest ever prime minister, according to reporting from the House of Commons Library.
That recovery has now been interrupted by a different kind of unrest. In late July 2026, clashes between Hindu and Muslim communities broke out in Nepal's southern Sunsari district after a dispute over loud music and religious flags during a Hindu procession.
The violence spread to Siraha, where a shopping mall was set ablaze, leaving at least three people dead. Prime Minister Shah, who has rarely spoken in public since taking office, broke his silence to appeal for calm, as reported by Al Jazeera.
The episode matters beyond its immediate death toll because it tests whether Nepal's new government can manage a crisis that falls outside the anti corruption framework that brought it to power. A prime minister elected on a mandate to clean up politics is now confronting a communal fault line that no election result can settle on its own.
Pakistan Administered Kashmir: An Election Turns Into a Body Count
Of the five crises covered here, the unrest in Pakistan administered Azad Kashmir has produced the highest toll. Demonstrations led by the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee began on 7 June 2026 over a 38 point charter of demands, chief among them opposition to the 12 seats reserved in the territory's legislative assembly for refugees from Indian administered Kashmir living elsewhere in Pakistan. The committee argues the arrangement lets non residents shape local politics.
Talks between a federal ministerial team and the committee's leadership broke down in May, and by mid July a curfew had shut down Muzaffarabad, with the internet restricted and commerce at a standstill, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The UN human rights chief Volker Turk appealed for calm ahead of the legislative assembly vote scheduled for 27 July, noting that dozens of people, mostly protesters but also police personnel, had already been killed, per the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The vote went ahead despite the warnings. The banned action committee says more than 30 people were killed in clashes during the first round of polling, and by early August the crisis had spread beyond the territory itself, with police detaining solidarity protesters in Lahore, as Al Jazeera reported.
A legal analysis from JURIST pointed to the structural problem underneath the violence: Azad Jammu and Kashmir enjoys local autonomy but not full sovereignty, meaning ultimate decisions rest with Islamabad even as local institutions absorb the public's anger.
World At Net has previously examined how Pakistan's regional position, wedged between three nuclear armed neighbours, leaves little room for prolonged internal instability without wider strategic consequences, in our report on Pakistan and the coming of three nuclear neighbours.
India: The Cockroach Movement and the Fight Over Accountability
India's protest wave began with a joke. A digital strategist named Abhijeet Dipke launched the satirical Cockroach Janta Party in May 2026, mocking a remark by the Chief Justice of India that had compared unemployed youth to pests.
Within weeks the online movement had become an offline one, centred on Delhi's Jantar Mantar and driven by anger over irregularities in the 2026 medical entrance examination, which forced millions of students to resit the test.
The movement's turning point came when Ladakhi environmentalist Sonam Wangchuk joined the encampment on 28 June and began an indefinite hunger strike demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
On 20 July, more than 10,000 protesters attempting to march on parliament were met with tear gas and baton charges; roughly 150 people were hospitalised, according to CNN. Human Rights Watch documented the use of excessive force against what it described as a largely peaceful demonstration and called on the Modi government to halt mobile internet suspensions used to contain the unrest.
Wangchuk ended his 26 day hunger strike on 23 July after the government pledged not to pursue legal action against protesters and to review the examination process, and Pradhan resigned two days later, as the Washington Post reported.
World At Net covered the resignation in detail in India's student protest movement forces the education minister to resign, noting how international coverage largely framed the episode as a story about accountability rather than diplomacy, even as it became the largest domestic challenge Modi has faced in three terms.
Tunisia: Five Years of Emergency Rule and Rising Public Anger
On 25 July 2026, thousands of Tunisians marched down Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis to mark five years since President Kais Saied suspended parliament, later dissolved it, and began ruling by decree.
The demonstration, one of the largest in a year that has already seen a sharp rise in street protest according to the Al Jazeera, called for Saied's resignation and the release of jailed opposition figures, among them 85 year old former parliament speaker Rached Ghannouchi.
Beneath the political anger sits an economic one. Country wide protests broke out in July over sweeping electricity and water cuts imposed during a heatwave, as Tunisia's infrastructure buckled under demand, according to the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
Parliament speaker Ibrahim Bouderbala urged citizens not to let frustration over utilities escalate, while Saied himself promised the outages would end and warned that the state would act firmly against anyone trying to worsen the situation, per a follow up Al Jazeera report. Tunisia's Forum for Economic and Social Rights recorded 4,838 protests in 2025 alone, an 83 percent increase on the year before, a scale of mobilisation that shows little sign of receding in 2026.
Colombia: Sovereignty, Succession and Street Mobilisation
Colombia's unrest in 2026 has moved through two distinct phases. The first was diplomatic. In January, President Gustavo Petro called nationwide demonstrations in Bogota's Plaza de Bolivar and outside the US embassy after President Donald Trump suggested a military operation against Colombia "sounds good" to him, according to The City Paper Bogota.
Petro framed the mobilisation as a defence of national sovereignty amid a deepening rift with Washington over security cooperation and counter narcotics policy.
The second phase has been domestic and constitutional. Petro's own presidency ended amid a disputed election, and on 20 July, Colombia's Independence Day, he delivered a farewell address urging supporters to defend his government's social and economic reforms against reversal by incoming president elect Abelardo de la Espriella, who was inaugurated on 7 August, per the Washington Post.
The transfer of power itself became a flashpoint, with the president elect requesting his inauguration be moved from Congress to a military base, a request that only deepened tensions around a contested transition, as Al Jazeera detailed.
Common Threads: What Connects These Five Crises
Three patterns recur across Nepal, Pakistan administered Kashmir, India, Tunisia and Colombia. First, each crisis involves a government struggling to control the narrative once young people and digitally organised movements take to the streets, whether that is Nepal's Gen Z generation, India's Cockroach movement or Kashmir's action committee.
Second, economic strain, from Tunisia's power cuts to Kashmir's stalled subsidies, sits underneath almost every political demand, confirming what World At Net's broader coverage of the new world order has argued about the entanglement of economic and political instability in 2026.
Third, state responses have leaned heavily on force and communications restrictions, from internet shutdowns in Delhi and Muzaffarabad to curfews in Kathmandu, a pattern that tends to harden rather than defuse public anger.
- Nepal's political recovery from the 2025 Gen Z uprising is being tested by deadly Hindu Muslim clashes in its southern districts, forcing new Prime Minister Balen Shah into his first major public address since taking office.
- Pakistan administered Kashmir has recorded more than 30 deaths since June 2026, as protests over reserved assembly seats collided with a contested regional election on 27 July.
- India's Cockroach Janta Party movement forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation after weeks of protest, tear gas and a 26 day hunger strike by activist Sonam Wangchuk.
- Tunisia marked five years of President Kais Saied's emergency rule with mass protests, compounded by anger over electricity and water shortages during a summer heatwave.
- Colombia's unrest moved from a sovereignty dispute with Washington in January to a tense presidential transition, with outgoing President Gustavo Petro urging supporters to defend his reforms as Abelardo de la Espriella took office in August.
- Across all five countries, digitally organised, youth led movements and economic grievance are outpacing governments' ability to respond without resorting to force or communications blackouts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are Nepal, Pakistan administered Kashmir, India, Tunisia and Colombia all seeing unrest at the same time?
Each country's protests have separate immediate triggers, a communal clash in Nepal, an election dispute in Kashmir, an exam scandal in India, five years of emergency rule in Tunisia and a contested presidential transition in Colombia. What links them is a broader climate of economic strain and eroding public trust in institutions that has made 2026 an unusually volatile year for street politics worldwide.
Is the unrest in Pakistan administered Kashmir connected to the wider India Pakistan dispute over the region?
Not directly. The current protests are driven by local grievances over political representation and governance within Azad Jammu and Kashmir, organised by the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee. They are separate from, though set against the backdrop of, the long running territorial dispute between India and Pakistan over the wider Kashmir region.
Did India's protests succeed in changing government policy?
Yes. Sustained pressure from the Cockroach Janta Party movement led to the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on 25 July 2026, along with government commitments to review examination procedures and compensate affected students.
What does Tunisia's protest movement want?
Protesters are demanding the resignation of President Kais Saied, the release of jailed opposition figures and a reversal of the emergency powers he has held since July 2021. Immediate anger has also focused on electricity and water shortages during the summer heatwave.
Is Colombia's unrest likely to continue after the change in government?
Tensions remain elevated following a disputed election and a transition that outgoing President Gustavo Petro has openly contested. Whether unrest continues will depend largely on how incoming President Abelardo de la Espriella handles the reforms Petro urged supporters to defend.
World At Net · Global Affairs Desk. This article will be updated as the situations in Nepal, Pakistan administered Kashmir, India, Tunisia and Colombia continue to develop.
0 Comments