Every Independence Day, I hear the same sentence, “Pakistan’s youth are its future.” It sounds hopeful, but sometimes “the future” feels like a polite waiting room—wait for a job, for merit to matter, for stable electricity, for a visa, for the country to become liveable. I belong to this generation, and I do not think we can remain permanently “the future” while being excluded from the present.
Postcolonial states inherit more than borders. They inherit institutions built to extract, police and rank people rather than serve them. We changed the flag, but much of the architecture of power remains as it was—the officer above the citizen, the elite school above the government school, and the powerful surname above the qualified applicant. Some young Pakistanis are born near the starting line while others are outside the stadium.
Around 67 per cent of the population is under 30 (UNFPA Pakistan, 2025 State of World Population Report). But a demographic dividend is not magic. It only appears when young people have quality education, health, decent work and a meaningful voice. Without these, the same numbers that look promising in reports can become frustration on the streets.
Gen Z is already trying to create its own routes. Young Pakistanis freelance, run small online businesses, make political commentary through memes, learn software from YouTube and use AI before many institutions have decided what to do with it. Yet these labels hide a cruel class divide. A child using an AI tutor in an elite Lahore school and a child in rural Balochistan who has never sat in a classroom are both called Gen Alpha. Pakistan’s latest Economic Survey reports 28 percent of children out of school and education spending at only 0.8 per cent of GDP (Pakistan Economic Survey). That gap, not the young generation, is our real challenge.
Yes, our attention is scattered between TikTok, political spectacle, celebrity scandals and endless online outrage. But TikTok did not create unemployment, sifarish, inflation, unsafe streets or a curriculum disconnected from the labour market. Attention does not disappear in a vacuum. It is pulled away by an economy that makes survival a full-time job and a political culture that gives young people noise but little agency.
Nepotism is not merely bad administration, rather, it is social theft. A graduate sends hundreds of CVs, is asked for experience for an entry-level job and still loses to someone’s son, cousin or party worker. Class decides who can accept an unpaid internship, who speaks English with the “right” accent, and who can afford to wait. Merit is celebrated in speeches and buried in practice.
For young women, the bargain is even more brutal. We are told to study, work and contribute, while calculating the safety of every road, bus, office and home. In 2024, 32,617 cases of gender-based violence were reported in Pakistan, including 5,339 incidents of rape, while the national rape conviction rate was only 0.5 per cent (SSDO, Mapping Gender-Based Violence in Pakistan 2024). These are reported cases in a society where many survivors are silenced before reaching a police station. A survivor is often cross-examined by society before she enters court: What was she wearing? Why was she outside? Why speak now? A state that cannot protect its daughters, investigate cases or punish perpetrators cannot blame women for withdrawing from public life.
The butterfly effect in Pakistan is not abstract. One unsafe bus route can make one girl leave university. One school without a teacher can push one child into labour. One delayed rape trial can tell thousands of women that justice is fictional. These failures gather force until they become brain drain, inequality and despair. Then the state calls the youth a challenge.
My work in international security has also made me question what Pakistan counts as “security.” We measure it through borders, weapons, and deterrence, but youth measures it differently: Can I afford food? Can I study, breathe clean air, find work and speak without fear? Why should resources go to bombs when they could build futures? A country cannot call itself secure if its borders are defended while its classrooms, hospitals and young minds are exposed.
Living and working in Europe made me understand another barrier: passport politics. The Global North speaks of mobility as a choice, however, much of the Global South experiences it as permission. A European student registers for a conference. A Pakistani student first searches for a visa appointment, then collects bank statements, invitation letters, convinces embassy that they will return and hopes. Even “partially funded” opportunities can become unaffordable once rupees meet euros. Passport politics quietly decides whose ideas are allowed to travel and whose movement is suspicious.
We then accuse young Pakistanis of brain drain, as though leaving is always a betrayal. But perhaps we should ask why staying increasingly feels like sacrifice and leaving feels like strategy. Migration is not always rejection of Pakistan often it is a search for stability and a fair return on years of education. The answer is not to guilt young people into staying, but to build a country they do not have to escape in order to grow.
Hence, transforming this demographic dividend requires more than laptop and certificate distributions, motivational speeches or youth councils with no real power. It means foundational education, apprenticeships linked to actual jobs, support for freelancers and small businesses, safe mobility and workplaces for women, climate-resilient schools, mental-health support, and youth representation where decisions are actually made. It also means treating libraries, arts, sports and public spaces as infrastructure rather than luxuries.
This August 14, I do not see Pakistan’s youth as its biggest challenge. They are a mirror reflecting the challenge: a postcolonial order that changed rulers but preserved hierarchy. Give young people education, safety, mobility, merit and a stake in the republic, and they will build. Keep them waiting, and frustration will build instead.
A demographic dividend is not a gift. It is a deadline and ours is already running.
—Kashaf Sohail is a recipient of the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Scholarship. She holds a Joint Master’s degree in Global Studies from the University of Vienna (Austria), the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA), and Leipzig University (Germany). Her work focuses on social sciences research, and she has authored several publications in the field. She is currently based in Berlin, Germany and can be reached at [email protected]
