Youth movements have emerged across the globe, starting in Nepal in July 2024 and later spreading to Madagascar and Peru. They are part of a broader trend as the freedom to protest has become increasingly curtailed. Since late September, protests have swept across Moroccan towns and cities under the “GenZ 212” banner (212 being the Moroccan dial code). Triggered in part by a smaller protest outside Agadir’s Hassan II Hospital, where several women died during failed C-sections, the movement has since evolved into a wider reckoning with long-held grievances.
In late September, protesters took to the streets chanting “freedom, dignity, and social justice” (hurriyyeh, karama, adala ijtimaaiyya). Youths aged between fifteen and thirty-four, who make up nearly a third of Morocco’s population, are also the group most affected by labor-market exclusion. Unemployment rates have reached 35 percent and roughly one in three are neither working nor being educated. (The figures for unemployment are inconsistent, however, with the World Bank and International Labor Organization putting youth unemployment—from the ages of fifteen to twenty-four—at 22 percent in 2024, while national data and media reports have cited higher figures of up to 35 percent.) This generation, born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s, describes itself as being more defiant than its predecessors and is effectively demanding change, not promises.
Although many of the demands echo those brandished by the earlier 20 February Movement (M20), which rose to prominence during the 2011 Arab uprisings, GenZ212 is operating with a different repertoire and in a rapidly changing political and economic context. Among the changes are increased investments in megaprojects and world sporting events such as the African Cup of Nations in 2026 and the World Cup planned for 2030.
As the events are still unfolding, GenZ212 has revealed much about a country in which wealth is spread unevenly—where rural areas are marginalized in comparison to urban areas, and where the returns from macroeconomic development and megaprojects have not trickled down to the whole population. In this regard, the movement is demanding a fundamental reform of the education and healthcare systems so they can provide quality, free, and accessible services for all. They are also demanding accountability, particularly in corruption cases at all levels of government and public office. By addressing concerns that impact the nation and cut across social classes and geographies, the movement has also connected different protests, encompassing demands advanced in 2011, but also those voiced in smaller protests, such as those in Imider (2011), the Rif (2016–2017), and Jerada (2017–2018).
Although the demands are focused on socioeconomic reforms, politics remain central through questions of accountability, responsibility, and the organization of peaceful sit-ins. For example, the GenZ212 records regular podcasts in the evenings, hosting journalists and activists with whom members can interact, which are later broadcast on YouTube. The movement has received varying degrees of support from the country’s political class, spanning left-wing parties such as the Federation of the Democratic Left and the Unified Socialist Party, as well as the Islamist Justice and Development Party, which later rescinded its support after the outbreak of violence, as well as civil society actors providing on-the-ground assistance. This does not mean that the movement endorses a defined ideology. It has so far strayed away from aligning with any specific group, allowing it, on the one hand, to maintain its focus on socioeconomic demands, and on the other, to engage in open debate and chart alternative outcomes.
The GenZ212 movement remains leaderless and decentralized. The government claims this makes it difficult to engage with. The decision, however, is justified on multiple grounds, by a fear of cooptation or retaliation against proscribed individuals as well as a desire to maintain a collective spirit. Meta-owned platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, which were prominent during the uprisings of 2011, are seeing increased infiltration by bots and trolls, and are facing disinformation campaigns. Therefore, Discord and VPN accounts, which require no more than a pseudonym, provide alternative platforms where instant chat and voice rooms create a civic space for debate and provide opportunities to undo rumors and address members’ questions. This contrasts with traditional broadcast news and social platforms that dominated over a decade ago. GenZ212’s Discord server has over 250,000 members today.
As protests have evolved, the movement’s digital backbone has become central to how it corrects narratives and recalibrates tactics on the ground. For example, following the first two days of protests on September 27–28, when GenZ212 faced repression and arrests, the movement was quick to adapt. Instead of gathering in usual places where people convene, the movement turned to working class neighborhoods for protests. When violence broke out in towns such as Laqliaa and Sidi Bibi, and in the province of Chtouka, leading to the deaths of three people after police intervention, members reconvened on Discord. There they clarified events and discussed the need for peaceful protests, thereby countering attempts to portray the movement as reckless and violent.
Amid rumors of foreign interference or accusations that the GenZ212 movement opposes the monarchy, the protesters have instead sought to represent their activism as citizenship-based. They have also brandished banners supportive of the king, even pausing their demonstrations for his October 10 address to parliament, before resuming on October 18. Additionally, the protest methods themselves have been called into question over more targeted action such as boycotts. For example, on the movement’s Twitter platforms it called for boycotting the African Cup of Nations football tournament, with hardline supporter groups announcing, in reaction to the wave of arrests of protesters, that they would stay away from stadiums. Targeted boycotts against the companies of Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch have also been organized.
Crucially, GenZ212 has highlighted two interrelated points. First, the movement has shed light on the challenges that remain unaddressed in Morocco. Decades of structural reforms have yielded stability and growth in some sectors. Yet the perennial center-periphery divide, unemployment, limited social mobility, and fragmented access to basic services persist. The movement’s core questions, therefore, seem not only to be about redistribution of wealth but about priorities: What kind of development needs to take place and for whom?
Second, years of political and institutional fatigue have brought forth a generation that is intent on voicing its expectations and contributing to the political debate. Crucially, both the challenges and demands of GenZ212 showcase that Moroccan youth is not an apolitical, monolithic category.
On Sunday, a statement from the royal palace, presented in the Council of Ministers, announced budget increases of up to 16 percent compared to last year for the health and education sectors, with $15 billion allocated. The movement responded with a statement positively welcoming the news. Yet it also stressed its intent to closely watch the implementation of such measures and, particularly, to monitor the release of detained protesters—which it regards as a “test for the state’s seriousness and a condition for restoring trust and building a common future.”
Whether the movement lasts or not, it has reopened a civic debate thought to have vanished from public life. It has also reminded observers that security and stability are not only about development, but about sustaining hope and renewing trust. For a generation raised on promises of amelioration, the protests seem to be less about a breakdown of stability than they represent an erosion of faith in gradualism.
