| Administrative divisions of Myanmar | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Category | Unitary state |
| Location | Republic of the Union of Myanmar |
| Number | 7 regions 7 states 1 union territory 1 self-administered division 5 self-administered zones (as of 2024) |
| Populations | 286,627 (Kayah State) - 7,360,703 (Yangon Region) |
| Areas | 7,054 km2 (2,724 sq mi) (Naypyidaw Union Territory) - 155,801 km2 (60,155 sq mi) (Shan State) |
| Government | |
| Subdivisions | |
| Administrative divisions of Myanmar |
|---|
| First level |
| Sub-first level |
| Second level |
| Third level |
| Fourth level |
| Fifth level |
Myanmar is divided into 21administrative divisions, which includeseven regions,seven states,one union territory,one self-administered division, andfive self-administered zones.
Following is the table of government subdivisions and its organizational structure based on different regions, states, the union territory, the self-administered division, and the self-administered zones:
| Administrative division | Burmese name | No. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Region | တိုင်းဒေသကြီး tuing:desa.kri: | IPA:[táɪɰ̃dèθa̰dʑí] taìñ deithác̱ì | 7 |
| State | ပြည်နယ် pranynai | IPA:[pjìnɛ̀] pyine | 7 |
| Union Territory | ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေ pranytaungcu.nai-mre | IPA:[pjìdàʊɰ̃zṵnɛ̀mjè] pyiṯauñs̱únemyei | 1 |
| Self-Administered Division | ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရ တိုင်း kuiypuing-uphkyuphkwang.ra.tuing: | IPA:[kòbàɪɰ̃ʔoʊʔtɕʰoʊʔkʰwɪ̰ɰ̃ja̰táɪɰ̃] koup̱aiñ ouʔhcouʔ hkwíñyá taìñ | 1 |
| Self-Administered Zone | ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ kuiypuing-uphkyuphkwang.ra.desa. | IPA:[kòbàɪɰ̃ʔoʊʔtɕʰoʊʔkʰwɪ̰ɰ̃ja̰dèθa̰] koup̱aiñ ouʔhcouʔ hkwíñyá deithá | 5 |
The regions were called divisions prior to August 2010,[1] and four of them are named after their capital city, the exceptions beingSagaing Region,Ayeyarwady Region andTanintharyi Region. The regions can be described as ethnically predominantlyBurman (Bamar), while the states, the zones and Wa Division are dominated by ethnic minorities.
Yangon Region has the largest population and is the most densely populated. The smallest population isKayah State. In terms of land area,Shan State is the largest andNaypyidaw Union Territory is the smallest.
Regions and states are divided intodistricts (ခရိုင်;kha yaing orkhayaing,IPA:[kʰəjàɪɴ]). These districts consist oftownships (မြို့နယ်;myo-ne,IPA:[mjo̰nɛ̀]) that include towns (မြို့;myo,IPA:[mjo̰]),wards (ရပ်ကွက်;yatkwet,IPA:[jaʔkwɛʔ])) andvillage tracts (ကျေးရွာအုပ်စု;kyayywa oksu,IPA:[tɕéjwàʔoʊʔsṵ]). Village tracts are groups of adjacentvillages (ကျေးရွာ;kyayywa,IPA:[tɕéjwà]).
The self-administered division (SAD) exists at an administrative level half-a-step below that of states, regions and the union territory, and the self-administrative zones (SAZ) exists at the district level.[2] The self-administered areas were formed by statutes on territory controlled by Myanmar'sethnic armed organisations.[3]
| Level | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Division Type | Region (တိုင်းဒေသကြီး) State (ပြည်နယ်) | Self-Administered Zone (ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ) | Township (မြို့နယ်) | Town (မြို့) | Ward (ရပ်ကွက်) |
| District (ခရိုင်) | Village tract (ကျေးရွာအုပ်စု) | Village (ကျေးရွာ) | |||
| Union Territory (ပြည်တောင်စုနယ်မြေ) | |||||
| Self-Administered Division[a] (ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရတိုင်း) |
Within the hierarchy, the most significant unit of local governance below the first level is thetownship which form the a consistent set of administrative units across the country. Often, local governance will go directly from the township to the ward. Most of the country do not have separate town offices. For example, in 2015, only 7 of the 27 townships of Ayeyarwady Region had a town office at all.[4]
Additionally, some townships are divided into Subtownships (မြို့နယ်ခွဲ), which are semi-official parts of a township administered separately, often revolving around a town separate from the township's principal town. Many reports will use subtownships, especially more established subtownships used by the main townships themselves.
| Flag | Name | Burmese | Capital | ISO | Region | Pop. (2014)[5] | Area (km2) | Density (per km2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Ayeyarwady Region | ဧရာဝတီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Pathein | MM-07 | Lower | 6,184,829 | 35,031.8 | 176.6 |
 | Bago Region | ပဲခူးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Bago | MM-02 | Lower | 4,867,373 | 39,402.3 | 123.5 |
 | Chin State | ချင်းပြည်နယ် | Hakha | MM-14 | Upper | 478,801 | 36,018.8 | 13.3 |
 | Kachin State | ကချင်ပြည်နယ် | Myitkyina | MM-11 | Upper | 1,689,441 | 89,041.8 | 19.0 |
 | Kayah State | ကယားပြည်နယ် | Loikaw | MM-12 | Upper | 286,627 | 11,731.5 | 24.4 |
 | Kayin State | ကရင်ပြည်နယ် | Hpa-an | MM-13 | Lower | 1,574,079 | 30,383 | 51.8 |
 | Magway Region | မကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Magwe | MM-03 | Upper | 3,917,055 | 44,820.6 | 87.4 |
 | Mandalay Region | မန္တလေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Mandalay | MM-04 | Upper | 6,165,723 | 37,945.6 | 162.5 |
.svg) | Mon State | မွန်ပြည်နယ် | Mawlamyine | MM-15 | Lower | 2,054,393 | 12,296.6 | 167.1 |
 | Naypyidaw Union Territory | နေပြည်တော်ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေ | Naypyidaw | MM-18 | Upper | 1,160,242 | 7,054 | 164.5 |
 | Rakhine State | ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ် | Sittwe | MM-16 | Lower | 3,188,807 | 36,778.0 | 86.7 |
.svg) | Sagaing Region | စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Monywa | MM-01 | Upper | 5,325,347 | 93,704.8 | 56.8 |
 | Shan State | ရှမ်းပြည်နယ် | Taunggyi | MM-17 | Upper | 5,824,432 | 155,801.3 | 37.4 |
 | Tanintharyi Region | တနင်္သာရီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Dawei | MM-05 | Lower | 1,408,401 | 44,344.9 | 31.8 |
 | Yangon Region | ရန်ကုန်တိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Yangon | MM-06 | Lower | 7,360,703 | 10,276.7 | 716.2 |
| Flag | Name | Burmese | Capital | State | Population |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Danu Self-Administered Zone | ဓနုကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ | Pindaya | Shan State | 161,835 |
 | Kokang Self-Administered Zone | ကိုးကန့်ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ | Laukkai | Shan State | 123,733 |
 | Naga Self-Administered Zone | နာဂကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ | Lahe | Sagaing Region | 116,828 |
 | Pa Laung Self-Administered Zone | ပလောင်းကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ | Namhsan | Shan State | 110,805 |
 | Pa'O Self-Administered Zone | ပအိုဝ့်ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ | Hopong | Shan State | 380,427 |
 | Wa Self-Administered Division | ဝကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရတိုင်း | Hopang | Shan State | 558,000 |
The administrative structure of the states, regions and self-administering bodies is outlined in the new constitution adopted in 2008.[6]
Executive authority is held in each state or region by a Regional or State Government consisting of a Chief Minister, other ministers and an Advocate General.[7] ThePresident appoints the Chief Minister from a list of qualified candidates in the regional or state legislature; the regional or state legislature must approve the President's choice unless they can prove that he or she does not meet the constitutional qualifications.[7]
Legislative authority resides with theState Hluttaw orRegional Hluttaw made up of elected civilian members and representatives of the Armed Forces. Both divisions are considered equivalent, the only distinction being that states have large ethnic minority populations and regions are mostly populated by the national majorityBurmans / Bamar.[8]
The constitution states that Naypyidaw shall be a Union Territory under the direct administration of thePresident. Day-to-day functions would be carried out on the President's behalf by theNaypyidaw Council led by a Chairperson. The Chairperson and members of the Naypyidaw Council are appointed by the President and shall include civilians and representatives of the Armed Forces.
Self-Administered Zones and Self-Administered Divisions are administered by a Leading Body. The Leading Body consists of at least ten members and includes State or Regional Hluttaw members elected from the Zones or Divisions and other members nominated by the Armed Forces. The Leading Body has both executive and legislative powers. A Chairperson is head of each Leading Body.
WithinSagaing Region:[9]
WithinShan State:
.svg)
Districts are the second-order divisions of Myanmar and are often named after a population center within the district of the same name. Shan State has the most districts, even excluding Self-Administered Zones and Divisions. Naypyidaw Union Territory, Tanintharyi and Mon State have the least with just 4 districts.[10] The District's role is more supervisory as the 330townships are the basic administrative unit of local governance and are the only type of administrative division that covers the entirety of Myanmar. A District is led by a District Administrator and a Township is administered by a Township Administrator. Both are appointed civil servants through theGeneral Administration Department (GAD) of theMinistry of Home Affairs (MOHA). The Minister of Home Affairs is to be appointed by the military according to the 2008 constitution.[11] The2008 Constitution of Myanmar defined 75 districts. In April 2022, 46 additional districts were formed by MOHA bringing the total up to 121 districts.[12]
Most local governance services are offered at the Township level; few services are offered at the District level. The Township Administrator is the key focal point for most interactions with the government and the Township Administrator serves as a representative of the State or Region government and executes functions on behalf of the State or Region.[11] All Township governments are staffed by 34 GAD civil servants regardless of population, although larger townships may have several Township committees that coordinate with the Township and report to the District.[4] Subtownships exist for many but not all townships. They can be created for many reasons including, townships with large areas, townships with a large natural barrier or townships with a lopsided population distribution. These subtownships are unofficial, but can be used by the Township administration and national ministries for data collection and administrative ease.
The lowest level of practical administration is theward for urban areas and village for rural areas. Villages are grouped into and administered asvillage tracts.[2] Village Tracts may contain up to 8 distinct villages. Some townships include areas not part of any ward or village tract. Most townships contain at least one ward/town, and are usually named after the population center. As of reforms in 2012 and 2013, Ward and Village Tract administrators are now typically elected, but report to the appointed Township Administrator. Ward Administrators and Village Tract Administrators (also called just Village Administrators) are supported by 100-household-heads and 10-household-heads who are collectively called area leaders.[4]
Most cities in Myanmar are contained within one township likePathein. In some cases, the rural portions of the township may be administered semi-independently as sub-townships.[13] InMandalay, the municipality was functionally administered at theMandalay District level with townships acting de facto as subdivisions of a city prior to 2022.[14] InYangon, the administrative jurisdiction of theYangon City Development Committee overlap across 33 townships and all 4 of Yangon Region's pre-2022 districts.[15] The definition of a city is ambiguous with the Burmese termမြို့ ('myo') being translated as any urban area. TheGeneral Administration Department only explicitly defines the three cities ofYangon,Mandalay andNaypyidaw.[16]
Below is a summary of how Myanmar's first-level administrative divisions have evolved:[17]
| 1948 Constitution | 1974 Constitution | 2008 Constitution |
|---|---|---|
| Kachin State | Kachin State | Kachin State |
| Karenni State | Karenni State | Kayah State |
| Shan State | Shan State | Shan State |
| Karen State | Karen State | Kayin State |
| Special Division of the Chins | Chin State | Chin State |
| Upper half of Tenasserim Division | Mon State | Mon State |
| Arakan Division | Arakan State | Rakhine State |
In 1900, Burma was a province ofBritish India, and was divided into two subdivisions:Lower Burma, whose capital was Rangoon with four divisions (Arakan, Irrawaddy, Pegu, Tenasserim), andUpper Burma, whose capital was Mandalay with six divisions (Meiktila, Minbu, Sagaing, North Federated Shan States and South Federated Shan States).
On 10 October 1922, theKarenni States of Bawlake, Kantarawaddy, and Kyebogyi became a part of the Federated Shan States. In 1940, Minbu division's name was changed to Magwe, and Meiktila Divisions became part of Mandalay District.
Upon independence, on 4 January 1948, the Chin Hills area was split from Arakan Division to form Chin Special Division, and Kachin State was formed by carving out the Myitkyina and Bhamo districts of Mandalay Division. Karen State was also created from Amherst, Thaton, and Toungoo Districts of Tenasserim Division.Mongpai State of the Federated Shan States was separated to form Karenni State, and Shan State was formed by merging the other Federated Shan States and the Wa States.
In 1952, Karenni State was renamed Kayah State. In 1964, Rangoon Division was separated from Pegu Division, whose capital shifted to Pegu. In addition, Karen State was renamed Kawthoolei State.
In 1972, the Hanthawaddy and Hmawbi districts were moved under Rangoon Division's jurisdiction.
In 1974, afterNe Win introduced a constitution, Chin Special Division became a state, and its capital moved fromFalam toHakha. Kawthoolei State's name was reverted to Karen State. Mon State was created out of portions of Tenasserim Division and Pegu Division. Mon State's capital becameMoulmein, and Tenasserim Division's becameTavoy. In addition, Arakan Division was granted statehood.
In 1989, after thecoup d'état by themilitary junta, the names of many divisions in Burma were altered in English to reflectBurmese pronunciations.[18]
After 1995, in Kachin StateMohnyin District was created out ofMyitkyina District as part of the peace agreement with theKachin Independence Army.
The 2008 Constitution stipulates the renaming of the 7 "divisions" (တိုင်း in Burmese) as "regions" (တိုင်းဒေသကြီး[19] in Burmese). It also stipulates the creation of Union territories, which include the capital ofNay Pyi Taw and ethnic self-administered zones (ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ[19] in Burmese) and self-administered divisions (ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရတိုင်း[19] in Burmese).[20] These self-administered regions include the following:
On 20 August 2010, the renaming of the 7 divisions and the naming of the 6 self-administered zones was announced by Burmese state media.[1]
{{cite report}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}:|website= ignored (help)| States |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Regions | ||
| Self-Administered Zones | ||
| Self-Administered Divisions | ||
| Union Territories | ||
