A year ago this month, Bangladesh witnessed its largest student protest movement in history. After the government responded with violent suppression that left hundreds dead and countless more wounded, the protests surged into a mass anti-government, pro-democracy campaign. Students and ordinary citizens from different sectors in society stood together against a repressive regime, and on August 5, 2025, they succeeded in toppling it. This issue on youth is inspired by the courage and activism of those students. We turn to various countries and regions to explore how youth are thinking, organizing, and imagining the future in the face of complex, global crises.
Youth is typically seen as a period of exploration — a time to create, experiment, make mistakes, learn, and chart new paths. It is also a time shaped by the opportunities and constraints of one’s social, political, and geopolitical context. Despite the vast inequalities shaped by national borders and economic systems, today’s generation faces many shared challenges: an alarming global backlash against hard-won human rights, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and the escalating crises of climate change and ethnonationalism. Young people are inheriting a world in which the future appears more volatile and uncertain than ever before.
Against this backdrop, urgent questions emerge: How will this generation confront authoritarianism and reclaim individual and collective rights? How will they seek justice, autonomy, and accountability in a world that too often denies them a voice? What new strategies are they developing, and what legacies are they drawing from? Are they experiencing anger, isolation, or apathy, or are they determined and hopeful? During summer 2025, we collaborated with our Oslo Scholar interns to explore these questions. Our interns worked hard, reaching out to people who inspired them at the Oslo Freedom Forum, exchanging ideas with new people, seeking insights from both young and seasoned activists, and reflecting on their own practices and environments. All of us learned.
We noted several threads across the contributions. One is the role of collective memory. Many young activists are learning from the past, drawing strength and insight from earlier movements and the experiences of previous generations. They acknowledge they are not acting alone but rather building on a long continuum of resistance, struggle, and hope. This intergenerational awareness helps young people understand the political landscape they are navigating and reminds them that their actions are part of a larger story.
At the same time, today’s youth are creating new ways of connecting, organizing, and remembering. Social media and other digital platforms are essential tools, especially in places where independent journalism is under threat or unfunded or where political repression silences dissent. These platforms allow youth to access information, share stories, and engage with struggles beyond their immediate environment. They are forging transnational solidarities, building networks across borders and among diasporas, and reimagining what global activism can look like. In many contexts, social media has become a substitute for journalism, a means of bearing witness and holding power to account.
But even as new media reshape the landscape of activism, traditional forms of engagement — such as local journalism, grassroots organizing, and archival work — continue to play a vital role for youth. These practices connect movements in specific places and histories, offering tools for memory, understanding, and transformation. Youth are not choosing between new and old; they are using both in creative ways.
This issue also reflects the wide range of concerns that shape the lives of young people today. The climate crisis looms large, as do feminist struggles for bodily autonomy and the rights of trans and LGBTQ+ communities. Wars and war-torn regions perpetuate violence and otherization and make access to education — never mind chances for a carefree childhood — difficult if not impossible. Youth are grappling with polarization, surveillance, the role of AI in their education and futures, and the increasing sense that their voices are being drowned out and dismissed as irrelevant.
The political powers have tightened their grip, not only stripping away rights to speech, voting, education, and economic opportunities, but also creating rifts in communities and families. In regions such as the United States and parts of Europe, the rise of authoritarianism may feel new, but elsewhere, repression and surveillance have been longstanding realities. Yet youth have not succumbed to silence.
What we expected to be a picture of crisis and despair instead revealed something quite different. The voices in this issue testify to resilience, clarity, and commitment. Across the world, young people are doing the work — often against enormous odds — to imagine and build a more just and livable world. That so many contributors speak with such dedication and insight is a source of hope. It reminds us that we are not alone, that others are facing similar challenges, and that solidarity across borders is not just necessary but already happening.
The youth in this issue come from or represent a wide range of countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Kenya, Peru, Somalia, South Sudan, Tibet, Thailand, and the United States. Most are students. Some contributors are elders who, at the request of youth, share their experiences and wisdom.
What fears and concerns weigh on today’s youth? Which injustices compel them to act? And how do they envision ending the cycles of inequality, environmental degradation, and violence to usher in a radically different future? The contributors to Shuddhashar FreeVoice‘s issue on YOUTH offer reflections, initiatives, and hope. They are not only imagining change; they are making it happen. We invite you to read and hear their voices.
