Myanmar nationality law

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Myanmar Citizenship Law
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသားဥပဒေ
People's Assembly
CitationLaw No. 4 of 1982
Territorial extentMyanmar
Enacted byPeople's Assembly
Enacted15 October 1982
Commenced15 October 1982
Status: Amended

The Nationality law of Myanmar currently recognises three categories of citizens, namely citizen, associate citizen and naturalised citizen, according to the 1982 Citizenship Law.[1][2] Citizens, as defined by the 1947 Constitution, are persons who belong to an "indigenous race", have a grandparent from an "indigenous race", are children of citizens, or lived in British Burma prior to 1942.[3][4]

Under the Burma Residents Registration Act of 1949 and the 1951 Resident Registration Rules, Burmese citizens are required to obtain a National Registration Card (နိုင်ငံသားစိစစ်ရေးကတ်ပြား, NRC), while non-citizens are given a Foreign Registration Card (နိုင်ငံခြားသားစိစစ်ရေးကတ်ပြား, FRC).[5] Citizens whose parents hold FRCs are not allowed to run for public office.[6] In 1989, the government conducted a nationwide citizenship scrutiny process to replace NRCs with citizenship scrutiny cards (CSCs) to certify citizenship.[5]

Myanmar has a stratified citizenship system. Burmese citizens' rights are distinctively different depending on the category they belong to and based on how one's forebears acquired their own citizenship category.

  • Full citizens (နိုင်ငံသား) are descendants of residents who lived in Burma prior to 1823 or were born to parents who were citizens at the time of birth.
  • Associate citizens (ဧည့်နိုင်ငံသား) are those who acquired citizenship through the 1948 Union Citizenship Law.
  • Naturalised citizens (နိုင်ငံသားပြုခွင့်ရသူ) are those who lived in Burma before 4 January 1948 and applied for citizenship after 1982.

Documentation[edit]

The Burmese government issues several forms of identity cards to Burmese citizens and residents.

Citizenship scrutiny cards[edit]

Citizenship scrutiny card
နိုင်ငံသားစိစစ်ရေးကတ်ပြား
TypeIdentity card
Issued by Myanmar
PurposeCitizenship
Valid in Myanmar
EligibilityBurmese citizens
ExpirationVaries

Citizenship scrutiny cards (နိုင်ငံသားစိစစ်ရေးကတ်ပြား) are issued to prove Burmese citizenship.[5] Citizens are eligible to receive a citizenship scrutiny card once they turn 10 years old.[5] The cards are paper-based and handwritten, and are issued by local township administration offices.[7] Citizenship scrutiny cards denote the following details:[5]

  • Obverse side:
    • Name – in Burmese letters
    • Photograph
    • Identification number – Formatted as #/XXX(suffix)######
      • First element is a number representing individual's state or region (1 to 14)
      • Second element is a series of three Burmese letters representing the individual's township
      • Third element is a suffix indicating the type of citizenship (full, associate, or naturalised)
      • Fourth element is a unique serial number consisting of six digits
    • Date of issue
    • Father's name
    • Birthplace
    • Ethnicity
    • Religion
    • Height
    • Blood type
    • Signature and rank of issuer
    • Notable physical attributes
  • Reverse side:
Citizenship tier Abbreviation (Burmese) Documentation Card colour
Full နိုင် Citizenship Scrutiny Card Pink[5]
Associate ဧည့် Associate Citizenship Scrutiny Card Blue[5]
Naturalised ပြု Naturalised Citizenship Scrutiny Card Green[5]

Other forms of documentation[edit]

The Burmese government also issues three-folded national registration cards (NRCs) to prove residency.[5] Until 31 May 2015, temporary registration / identification certificates were issued as proof of identity and residence for non-citizens, including Burmese residents of Chinese, Indian, and Rohingya origin.[5] These were replaced with the turquoise-coloured identity card for national verification, introduced on 1 June 2015.[5] Foreign registration certificates with one-year validity periods are issued to foreigners residing in the country.[5]

The Ministry of Health issues birth certificates through township medical officers.[5] Birth certificates are used to add children into a family's household list, enroll in primary school, and apply for citizenship scrutiny cards.[5]

Dual citizenship[edit]

Dual citizenship is not recognised by Myanmar.

Naturalisation[edit]

Foreigners who have been in the country since 1948 can also apply for nationality. [8]

Denial of citizenship to Rohingya[edit]

Burmese law does not consider Rohingyas as one of the 135 legally recognised ethnic groups of Myanmar,[9] thus denying most of them Myanmar citizenship.[10] The official claim of the Government of Myanmar is that the Rohingya people are the "citizens of Bangladesh"; however, the Government of Bangladesh does not recognize this claim, thus leaving the Rohingya stateless.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Tun Tun Aung (March 2007). "An Introduction to Citizenship Card under Myanmar Citizenship Law" (PDF). 現代社會文化研究 (38): 265–290. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 May 2014.
  2. ^ "Burma Citizenship Law". Government of Burma. UNHCR. 15 October 1982. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  3. ^ Battistella, Graziano (January 2017). "Rohingyas: The People for Whom No One Is Responsible". International Migration Policy Report. Center for Migration Studies of New York. pp. 4–17 – via ResearchGate.
  4. ^ Faruk, Hassan; Imran, Md. Al; Mian, Nannu (2014). "The Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh: A Vulnerable Group in Law and Policy". pp. 226–253 – via ResearchGate.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n A Legal Guide to Citizenship and Identity Documents in Myanmar (PDF). Justice Base. 2018.
  6. ^ Soe Than Lynn; Shwe Yinn Mar Oo (20 September 2010). "Citizenship criteria trips up election candidates". Myanmar Times. Archived from the original on 13 March 2012. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  7. ^ "The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age: Experience from Myanmar" (PDF). Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business. 4 June 2022.
  8. ^ Burma Citizenship Law
  9. ^ "Myanmar's Rohingya". The Economist. 20 October 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
  10. ^ "Why Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine state in Myanmar are at each others' throats". The Economist. 3 November 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
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