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]
| Myanmar Citizenship Law မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသားဥပဒေ | |
|---|---|
.svg) | |
| People's Assembly | |
| Citation | Law No. 4 of 1982 |
| Territorial extent | Myanmar |
| Enacted by | People's Assembly |
| Enacted | 15 October 1982 |
| Commenced | 15 October 1982 |
| Status: Amended | |
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
The Burmese government issues several forms of identity cards to Burmese citizens and residents.
Citizenship scrutiny cards
| Citizenship scrutiny card နိုင်ငံသားစိစစ်ရေးကတ်ပြား | |
|---|---|
| Type | Identity card |
| Issued by |  Myanmar |
| Purpose | Citizenship |
| Valid in | Myanmar |
| Eligibility | Burmese citizens |
| Expiration | Varies |
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:
- Fingerprint
- Occupation
- Domicile
- Signature of holder
| 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
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
Dual citizenship is not recognised by Myanmar.
Naturalisation
Foreigners who have been in the country since 1948 can also apply for nationality. [8]
Denial of citizenship to Rohingya
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.
