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