Administrative divisions of Myanmar


is divided into 21 administrative divisions, which include [|seven regions], [|seven states], one union territory, one self-administered division, and five self-administered zones.

Table

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:
The regions were called divisions prior to August 2010, and four of them are named after their capital city, the exceptions being Sagaing Region, Ayeyarwady Region and Tanintharyi Region. The regions can be described as ethnically predominantly Burman, 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 is Kayah State. In terms of land area, Shan State is the largest and Naypyidaw Union Territory is the smallest.
Regions and states are divided into districts. These districts consist of townships that include towns, wards ) and village tracts. Village tracts are groups of adjacent villages.
The self-administered division exists at an administrative level half-a-step below that of states, regions and the union territory, and the self-administrative zones exists at the district level. The self-administered areas were formed by statutes on territory controlled by Myanmar's ethnic armed organisations.

Structural hierarchy

Within the hierarchy, the most significant unit of local governance below the first level is the township 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.
Additionally, some townships are divided into Subtownships, 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.

Administrative divisions

Regions, States, and Union Territory

FlagNameBurmeseCapitalISORegionPop.
Area
Density
Ayeyarwady Regionဧရာဝတီတိုင်းဒေသကြီးPatheinLower6,184,82935,031.8176.6
Bago Regionပဲခူးတိုင်းဒေသကြီးBagoMM-02Lower4,867,37339,402.3123.5
Chin Stateချင်းပြည်နယ်HakhaMM-14Upper478,80136,018.813.3
Kachin Stateကချင်ပြည်နယ်MyitkyinaMM-11Upper1,689,44189,041.819.0
Kayah Stateကယားပြည်နယ်LoikawMM-12Upper286,62711,731.524.4
Kayin Stateကရင်ပြည်နယ်Hpa-anMM-13Lower1,574,07930,38351.8
Magway Regionမကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီးMagweMM-03Upper3,917,05544,820.687.4
Mandalay Regionမန္တလေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီးMandalayMM-04Upper6,165,72337,945.6162.5
Mon Stateမွန်ပြည်နယ်MawlamyineMM-15Lower2,054,39312,296.6167.1
Naypyidaw Union Territoryနေပြည်တော် ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေNaypyidawMM-18Upper1,160,2427,054164.5
Rakhine Stateရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်SittweMM-16Lower3,188,80736,778.086.7
Sagaing Regionစစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်းဒေသကြီးMonywaMM-01Upper5,325,34793,704.856.8
Shan Stateရှမ်းပြည်နယ်TaunggyiMM-17Upper5,824,432155,801.337.4
Tanintharyi Regionတနင်္သာရီတိုင်းဒေသကြီးDaweiMM-05Lower1,408,40144,344.931.8
Yangon Regionရန်ကုန်တိုင်းဒေသကြီးYangonMM-06Lower7,360,70310,276.7716.2

Self-Administered Division and Self-Administered Zones

FlagNameBurmeseCapitalStatePopulation
Danu Self-Administered Zoneဓနုကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသPindayaShan State161,835
Kokang Self-Administered Zoneကိုးကန့်ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသLaukkaiShan State123,733
Naga Self-Administered Zoneနာဂကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသLaheSagaing Region116,828
Pa Laung Self-Administered Zoneပလောင်းကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသNamhsanShan State110,805
Pa'O Self-Administered Zoneပအိုဝ့်ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသHopongShan State380,427
Wa Self-Administered Divisionဝကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရတိုင်းHopangShan State558,000

System of administration

The administrative structure of the states, regions and self-administering bodies is outlined in the new constitution adopted in 2008.

Regions and States

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. The President 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.
Legislative authority resides with the State Hluttaw or Regional 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 majority Burmans / Bamar.

Naypyidaw Union Territory

The constitution states that Naypyidaw shall be a Union Territory under the direct administration of the President. Day-to-day functions would be carried out on the President's behalf by the Naypyidaw 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 Division and Self-Administered Zones

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.
Within Sagaing Region:
  • Naga
Within Shan State:
  • Danu Self-Administered Zone,
  • Kokang Self-Administered Zone
  • Pa Laung Self-Administered Zone
  • Pa'O Self-Administered Zone,
  • Wa Self-Administered Division

    Districts and Townships

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. The District's role is more supervisory as the 330 townships 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 the General Administration Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Minister of Home Affairs is to be appointed by the military according to the 2008 constitution. The 2008 Constitution of Myanmar defined 75 districts. In April 2022, 46 additional districts were formed by MOHA bringing the total up to 121 districts.
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. 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. 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.

Wards, Village Tracts and Municipalities

The lowest level of practical administration is the ward for urban areas and village for rural areas. Villages are grouped into and administered as village tracts. 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 are supported by 100-household-heads and 10-household-heads who are collectively called area leaders.
Most cities in Myanmar are contained within one township like Pathein. In some cases, the rural portions of the township may be administered semi-independently as sub-townships. In Mandalay, the municipality was functionally administered at the Mandalay District level with townships acting de facto as subdivisions of a city prior to 2022. In Yangon, the administrative jurisdiction of the Yangon City Development Committee overlap across 33 townships and all 4 of Yangon Region's pre-2022 districts. The definition of a city is ambiguous with the Burmese term မြို့ being translated as any urban area. The General Administration Department only explicitly defines the three cities of Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyidaw.