15 - The Ambiguities of Citizenship Status in Myanmar

Summary

Section 2 of Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law defines four categories – “citizens”, “associate” citizens, “naturalised” citizens, and “foreigners”. “Foreigner” is a residual category containing all those not falling within one of the other categories; legally, therefore, no ambiguity should exist about an individual's status. Despite this, there are a considerable number of people in Myanmar whose citizenship status could be described as ambiguous. These include: those formally identified through policies and documentation as of undetermined citizenship (notably National Verification Card (NVC) holders); those whose situation is not defined in the law; those who have no formal proof of citizenship and so struggle to access rights associated with citizens; and “associate” and “naturalised” citizens. The scope of the problem is illustrated by the 2014 Population and Housing Census, which found that only 69.8 per cent of those enumerated had one of the three sorts of citizenship card (Union of Myanmar 2015, 2).

There has been little scholarly discussion of these ambiguities. Discussions have instead been dominated by the linked issues of ethnicity, taing yin tha status and the Rohingya. Zawacki (2012) sets out briefly the centrality of citizenship and discrimination to “the Rohingya problem”. Leider (2014) and Tonkin (2018) provide detailed explorations of the history of Rakhine State, engaging the question of Rohingya claims to be taing yin tha, while Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung (2016) examines in detail the narratives put forward by Rohingya and Rakhine actors. Rohingya scholars such as Islam (2018) have also set out their views of the Citizenship Law and the discriminatory practices that continue to exclude the Rohingya. Meanwhile Cheesman (2017) has highlighted the problematic nature of the concept of taing yin tha itself. Broadening the discussion, Nyi Nyi Kyaw (2017) emphasises how the failure to implement the Citizenship Law and documentary practices have contributed to the statelessness of the Rohingya and Pugh (2013) stresses the multi-faceted nature of citizenship and inclusion to argue that legal citizenship alone would not resolve the problem of the Rohingya's exclusion. Gibson, James, and Falvey (2016) use a human security approach to explore the relationship between citizenship and insecurity in the context of Rakhine State. Moving away from the situation of the Rohingya, Ho and Chua (2016) explore the situation of the Chinese, while Nyi Nyi Kyaw (2015) has highlighted the situation of non-Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and explored the concept of “mixed races”.