#FreeKoulchi, 2025
Since late September 2025, Moroccan youth have been expressing their anger towards their government and, more specifically, the public health and education systems, which they denounce as failing and corrupt.
This wave of protests follows the deaths of several pregnant women who were hospitalized for C-sections at the Agadir hospital. The organizing collective is called “Gen Z 212,” referring to Generation Z (late 1990s and early 2000s) and Morocco’s telephone code +212. Although rooted in the Moroccan context, it is part of an international dynamic specific to Generation Z, inspired by similar movements around the world for social justice, political transparency, and climate action. It communicates anonymously on the online platform Discord, which has almost 200,000 members; a democratic digital structure that reflects its participants, who have been in contact with technology since childhood.
#FreeKoulchi (which can be translated as “#FreeEveryone”) has become the rallying call of a new post-colonial generation that prefers to use English rather than Arabic. Long discreet, this generation is now asserting its desire for change, calling for stronger and fairer institutions as the key to a stable and equitable future.
On October 4, 2025, Malik Nejmi attended one of these Gen Z 212 gatherings in front of the Moroccan embassy in Paris, reporting on the growing involvement of young people from the Moroccan diaspora who, all over the world, are mobilizing alongside their fellow citizens in their country of origin.
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