View source for Administrative divisions of Myanmar

{{Short description|First-level political subdivisions of Myanmar}}
{{EngvarB|date=November 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2015}}
{{Infobox subdivision type
| name = Administrative divisions of Myanmar
| alt_name  = 
| alt_name1 = 
| alt_name2 = 
| alt_name3 = 
| alt_name4 = 
| map = {{Myanmar Administrative Divisions Image Map}}
| category = [[Unitary state]]
| territory = [[Myanmar|Republic of the Union of Myanmar]]
| upper_unit = 
| start_date = 
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| start_date2 = 
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| start_date4 = 
| legislation_begin = 
| legislation_begin1 = 
| legislation_begin2 = 
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| legislation_end = 
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| end_date = 
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| current_number = [[#Regions, States, and Union Territory|7 regions]]<br />[[#Regions, States, and Union Territory|7 states]]<br />[[Naypyidaw Union Territory|1 union territory]]<br />[[Wa Self-Administered Division|1 self-administered division]]<br />[[self-administered zone|5 self-administered zones]]
| number_date = 2024
| type = 
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| status = 
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| exofficio = 
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| population_range = 286,627 ([[Kayah State]]) - 7,360,703 ([[Yangon Region]])
| area_range = {{convert|7054|km2|abbr=on}} ([[Naypyidaw Union Territory]]) - {{convert|155,801|km2|abbr=on}} ([[Shan State]])
| government = [[Politics of Myanmar|Government of Myanmar]]
| government1 = 
| government2 = 
| government3 = 
| government4 = 
| subdivision = [[Districts of Myanmar|Districts]]
| subdivision1 = [[Townships of Myanmar|Townships]]
| subdivision2 = [[Wards of Myanmar|Wards]] and [[Village tract]]s
| subdivision3 = [[Villages of Myanmar|Villages]]
| subdivision4 = 
}}

{{Contains special characters|Burmese}}
{{Subdivisions of Myanmar}}

[[Myanmar]] is divided into 21 [[administrative division]]s, which include [[#Regions, States, and Union Territory|seven regions]], [[#Regions, States, and Union Territory|seven states]], [[Naypyidaw Union Territory|one union territory]], [[Wa Self-Administered Division|one self-administered division]], and [[self-administered zone|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:

{|class=wikitable
! [[List of administrative divisions by country|Administrative division]]
! colspan=2 | [[Burmese language|Burmese]] name
! No.
|-
| [[#Regions, States, and Union Territory|Region]]
| {{lang|my|တိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}<br /><small>tuing:desa.kri:</small>
| {{IPA|my|táɪɰ̃ dèθa̰ dʑí|IPA}}<br /><small>taìñ deithác̱ì</small>
| 7
|-
| [[#Regions, States, and Union Territory|State]]
| {{lang|my|ပြည်နယ်}}<br /><small>pranynai</small>
| {{IPA|my|pjìnɛ̀|IPA}}<br /><small>pyine</small>
| 7
|-
| [[Naypyidaw Union Territory|Union Territory]]
| {{lang|my|ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေ}}<br /><small>pranytaungcu.nai-mre</small>
| {{IPA|my|pjìdàʊɰ̃zṵnɛ̀mjè|IPA}}<br /><small>pyiṯauñs̱únemyei</small>
| 1
|-
| [[Wa Self-Administered Division|Self-Administered Division]]
| {{lang|my|ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရ တိုင်း}}<br /><small>kuiypuing-uphkyuphkwang.ra.tuing:</small>
| {{IPA|my|kòbàɪɰ̃ ʔoʊʔtɕʰoʊʔ kʰwɪ̰ɰ̃ja̰ táɪɰ̃|IPA}}<br /><small>koup̱aiñ ouʔhcouʔ hkwíñyá taìñ</small>
| 1
|-
| [[Self-administered zone|Self-Administered Zone]]
| {{lang|my|ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}}<br /><small>kuiypuing-uphkyuphkwang.ra.desa.</small>
| {{IPA|my|kòbàɪɰ̃ ʔoʊʔtɕʰoʊʔ kʰwɪ̰ɰ̃ja̰ dèθa̰|IPA}}<br /><small>koup̱aiñ ouʔhcouʔ hkwíñyá deithá</small>
| 5
|}

The regions were called divisions prior to August 2010,<ref name="weekly">{{cite news |title=တိုင်းခုနစ်တိုင်းကို တိုင်းဒေသကြီးများအဖြစ် လည်းကောင်း၊ ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရ တိုင်းနှင့် ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရ ဒေသများ ရုံးစိုက်ရာ မြို့များကို လည်းကောင်း ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေတွင် ခရိုင်နှင့်မြို့နယ်များကို လည်းကောင်း သတ်မှတ်ကြေညာ |newspaper=[[Weekly Eleven|Weekly Eleven News]] |date=20 August 2010 |url=http://www.news-eleven.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4375:2010-08-20-12-39-51&catid=42:2009-11-10-07-36-59&Itemid=112 |access-date=23 August 2010 |language=my}}</ref> 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 [[Bamar people|Burman (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 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 of Myanmar|districts]] ({{lang|my|ခရိုင်}}; ''kha yaing'' or ''khayaing'', {{IPA|my|kʰəjàɪɴ|IPA}}). These districts consist of [[Townships of Myanmar|townships]] ({{lang|my|မြို့နယ်}}; ''myo-ne'', {{IPA|my|mjo̰nɛ̀|IPA}}) that include towns ({{lang|my|မြို့}}; ''myo'', {{IPA|my|mjo̰|IPA}}), [[wards of Myanmar|wards]] ({{lang|my|ရပ်ကွက်}}; ''yatkwet'', {{IPA|my|jaʔ kwɛʔ|IPA}})) and [[village tract]]s ({{lang|my|ကျေးရွာအုပ်စု}}; ''kyayywa oksu'', {{IPA|my|tɕé jwà ʔoʊʔ sṵ|IPA}}). Village tracts are groups of adjacent [[villages of Myanmar|villages]] ({{lang|my|ကျေးရွာ}}; ''kyayywa'', {{IPA|my|tɕé jwà|IPA}}).

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.<ref name="MIMU">{{cite web |title=Summary of the Myanmar P-Code version- 9.2 Mar 2020 |url=https://themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/Pcodes_Read_Me_9.2_20Mar2020.pdf |website=MIMU |publisher=Myanmar Information Management Unit |access-date=4 April 2025}}</ref> The self-administered areas were formed by statutes on territory controlled by Myanmar's [[List of ethnic armed organisations in Myanmar|ethnic armed organisations]].<ref name="ISEAS">{{cite web |title=Asymmetrical Federalism in Myanmar: A Modern Mandala System? |url=https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ISEAS_Perspective_2021_155.pdf |website=Yusof Ishak Institute |publisher=ISEAS |access-date=4 April 2025}}</ref>

==Structural hierarchy==
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
! Level
! 1st
! 2nd
! 3rd
! 4th
! 5th
|-
! rowspan="4" | Division<br/>Type
| rowspan="2" | Region<br />({{lang|my|တိုင်းဒေသကြီး}})<br />State<br />({{lang|my|ပြည်နယ်}})
|Self-Administered Zone<br />({{lang|my|ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}})
| rowspan="4" |Township<br/>({{lang|my|မြို့နယ်}})
| Town<br/>({{lang|my|မြို့}})
| Ward<br/>({{lang|my|ရပ်ကွက်}})
|-
| rowspan="3" |District<br />({{lang|my|ခရိုင်}})
| rowspan="3" | Village tract<br/>({{lang|my|ကျေးရွာအုပ်စု}})
| rowspan="3" | Village<br/>({{lang|my|ကျေးရွာ}})
|-
| Union Territory<br/>(ပြည်တောင်စုနယ်မြေ)
|-
|Self-Administered Division{{efn|Also quasi-below the State level}}<br />({{lang|my|ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရတိုင်း}})
|-
|}
Within the hierarchy, the most significant unit of local governance below the first level is the [[Townships of Myanmar|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.<ref name=af1/>

Additionally, some townships are divided into Subtownships ({{lang|my|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.

== Administrative divisions ==
=== Regions, States, and Union Territory ===
{{static row numbers}}
{| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers static-row-header-text"
! class="unsortable" |[[List of Burmese flags|Flag]]
!align="left"|Name!!align="left"|[[Burmese language|Burmese]]!!align="left"|Capital
!align="right"|[[ISO 3166-2:MM|ISO]]
!align="left"|Region
!align="right"|Pop.<br/>(2014)<ref>{{cite book|title=The Union Report: Census Report Volume 2|publisher=Ministry of Immigration and Population|location=Nay Pyi Taw|date=2015|series=The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census|pages=12}}</ref>
!align="right"|Area<br/><small>(km<sup>2</sup>)</small>
!align="right"|Density<br/><small>(per km<sup>2</sup>)</small>
|-
| [[File:Flag of Ayeyarwady Region.svg|75px]]
| [[Ayeyarwady Region]]
| {{lang|my|ဧရာဝတီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}
| [[Pathein]]
| {{nowrap|MM-07}}
| [[Lower Myanmar|Lower]] 
| 6,184,829
| 35,031.8
| 176.6
|-
| [[File:Flag of Bago Region.png|75px]]
| [[Bago Region]]
| {{lang|my|ပဲခူးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}
| [[Bago, Myanmar|Bago]]
| MM-02
| Lower
| 4,867,373
| 39,402.3
| 123.5
|-
| [[File:Flag of Chin State.svg|75px]]
| [[Chin State]]
| {{lang|my|ချင်းပြည်နယ်}}
| [[Hakha]]
| MM-14
| [[Upper Myanmar|Upper]]
| 478,801
| 36,018.8
| 13.3
|-
| [[File:Flag of Kachin State.svg|75px]]
| [[Kachin State]]
| {{lang|my|ကချင်ပြည်နယ်}}
| [[Myitkyina]]
| MM-11
| Upper 
| 1,689,441
| 89,041.8
| 19.0
|-
| [[File:Flag of Kayah State.svg|75px]]
| [[Kayah State]]
| {{lang|my|ကယားပြည်နယ်}}
| [[Loikaw]]
| MM-12
| Upper 
| 286,627
| 11,731.5
| 24.4
|-
| [[File:Flag of Kayin State.svg|75px]]
| [[Kayin State]]
| {{lang|my|ကရင်ပြည်နယ်}}
| [[Hpa-an]]
| MM-13
| Lower 
| 1,574,079
| 30,383
| 51.8
|-
| [[File:Flag of Magway Region.svg|75px]]
| [[Magway Region]]
| {{lang|my|မကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}
| [[Magway, Myanmar|Magwe]]
| MM-03
| Upper
| 3,917,055
| 44,820.6
| 87.4
|-
| [[File:Flag of Mandalay Region.svg|75px]]
| [[Mandalay Region]]
| {{lang|my|မန္တလေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}
| [[Mandalay]]
| MM-04
| Upper
| 6,165,723
| 37,945.6
| 162.5
|-
| [[File:Flag of Mon State (2018).svg|75px]]
| [[Mon State]]
| {{lang|my|မွန်ပြည်နယ်}}
| [[Mawlamyine]]
| MM-15
| Lower
| 2,054,393
| 12,296.6
| 167.1
|-
| [[File:Flag of Naypyidaw Union Territory.svg|75px]]
| [[Naypyidaw Union Territory]]
| {{lang|my|နေပြည်တော်}} {{lang|my|ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေ}}
| [[Naypyidaw]]
| MM-18
| Upper
| 1,160,242
| 7,054
| 164.5
|-
| [[File:Flag of Rakhine.svg|75px]]
| [[Rakhine State]]
| {{lang|my|ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်}}
| [[Sittwe]]
| MM-16
| Lower
| 3,188,807
| 36,778.0
| 86.7
|-
| [[File:Flag of Sagaing Region (2019).svg|75px]]
| [[Sagaing Region]]
| {{lang|my|စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}
| [[Monywa]]
| MM-01
| Upper
| 5,325,347
| 93,704.8
| 56.8
|-
| [[File:Flag of Shan State.svg|75px]]
| [[Shan State]]
| {{lang|my|ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်}}
| [[Taunggyi]]
| MM-17
| Upper
| 5,824,432
| 155,801.3
| 37.4
|-
| [[File:Flag of Tanintharyi Region.svg|75px]]
| [[Tanintharyi Region]]
| {{lang|my|တနင်္သာရီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}
| [[Dawei]]
| MM-05
| Lower
| 1,408,401
| 44,344.9
| 31.8
|-
| [[File:Flag of Yangon Region.svg|75px]]
| [[Yangon Region]]
| {{lang|my|ရန်ကုန်တိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}
| [[Yangon]]
| MM-06
| Lower
| 7,360,703
| 10,276.7
| 716.2
|}

=== Self-Administered Division and Self-Administered Zones ===
{{Main|Self-administered zone}}

[[File:SAZs & SAD of Burma.png|thumb|Self-Administered Division and Self-Administered Zones]]

{{static row numbers}}
{| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers static-row-header-text"
! class="unsortable" |[[List of Burmese flags|Flag]]
!align="left"|Name!!align="left"|[[Burmese language|Burmese]]!!align="left"|Capital!!align="left"|State
!align="right"|Population
|-
| [[File:Flag of the Danu people.svg|border|75px]]
| [[Danu Self-Administered Zone]]
| {{lang|my|ဓနုကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}}
| [[Pindaya]]
| [[Shan State]]
|161,835
|-
| [[File:Flag of Kokang Self-Administered Zone.svg|border|75px]]
| [[Kokang Self-Administered Zone]]
| {{lang|my|ကိုးကန့်ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}}
| [[Laukkai]]
| [[Shan State]]
|123,733
|-
| [[File:Flag of Naga Self-Administered Zone.png|border|75px]]
| [[Naga Self-Administered Zone]]
| {{lang|my|နာဂကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}}
| [[Lahe, Myanmar|Lahe]]
| [[Sagaing Region]]
|116,828
|-
| [[File:Flag of the Palaung people.svg|border|75px]]
| [[Pa Laung Self-Administered Zone]]
| {{lang|my|ပလောင်းကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}}
| [[Namhsan]]
| [[Shan State]]
|110,805
|-
| [[File:Pa-o nationality flag.svg|border|75px]]
| [[Pa'O Self-Administered Zone]]
| {{lang|my|ပအိုဝ့်ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}}
| [[Hopong]]
| [[Shan State]]
|380,427
|-
| [[File:Flag of Wa State.svg|border|75px]]
| [[Wa Self-Administered Division]]
| {{lang|my|ဝကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရတိုင်း}}
| [[Hopang]]
| [[Shan State]]
|558,000
|}

==System of administration==
[[File:Myanmar states location.svg|thumb|right|{{legend|red|States of Myanmar}}{{legend|#fefee4|Regions of Myanmar}}]]
The administrative structure of the states, regions and self-administering bodies is outlined in the new constitution adopted in 2008.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Constitution_of_Myanmar_of_2008.pdf|title=Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008)|access-date=16 January 2018|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110427121736/http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Constitution_of_Myanmar_of_2008.pdf|archivedate=27 April 2011}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref name="Constitution2008">{{cite web |title=Constitution of the Republican of the Union of Myanmar |url=https://www.burmalibrary.org/docs5/Myanmar_Constitution-2008-en.pdf |website=burmalibrary.org |publisher=Minister of Information |access-date=22 December 2020}}</ref> The [[President of Myanmar|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.<ref name="Constitution2008"/>

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 [[Bamar people|Burmans / Bamar]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://asiafoundation.org/resources/pdfs/StateandRegionGovernmentsinMyanmarCESDTAF.PDF|title=Myanmar's States and Regions – The Asia Foundation|website=Asiafoundation.org|access-date=16 January 2018}}</ref>

=== Naypyidaw Union Territory ===
{{Main|Naypyidaw Union Territory}}

The constitution states that Naypyidaw shall be a Union Territory under the direct administration of the [[President of Myanmar|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]]:'''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tni.org/briefing/ethnic-politics-burma-time-solutions|title=Ethnic Politics in Burma: The Time for Solutions|date=14 February 2011|website=Tni.org|access-date=16 January 2018}}</ref>

* [[Naga Self-Administered Zone|Naga]] (Leshi, Lahe, and Namyun townships)

'''Within [[Shan State]]:'''

* [[Danu Self-Administered Zone]] (Ywangan and Pindaya townships),
* [[Kokang Self-Administered Zone]] (Konkyan and Laukkai townships)
* [[Pa Laung Self-Administered Zone]] (Namshan and Manton townships)
* [[Pa'O Self-Administered Zone]] (Hopong, Hshihseng, and Pinlaung townships),
* [[Wa Self-Administered Division]] (Hopang, Mongmao, Panwai, Pangsang, Naphan, and Metman townships)

=== Districts and Townships ===
[[File:Myanmar districts Map (current).svg|thumb|Districts of Myanmar as of 2022]]
[[Districts of Myanmar|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.<ref>{{cite web |title=Expansion of new districts in Nay Pyi Taw, regions and states according to political, administrative, economic and social development |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/moi:eng/news/6930 |website=Ministry of Information |date=2 May 2022}}</ref> The District's role is more supervisory as the 330 [[townships of Myanmar|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]] (GAD) of the [[Ministry of Home Affairs (Myanmar)|Ministry of Home Affairs]] (MOHA). The Minister of Home Affairs is to be appointed by the military according to the 2008 constitution. <ref name="UNDP">{{cite report |author=UNDP|date=June 2015|title=Mapping the State of Local Governance in Myanmar: Background and Methodology|url=https://www.mm.undp.org/content/myanmar/en/home/library/poverty/TheStateofLocalGovernanceChin/mapping-the-state-of-local-governance-in-myanmar--background-and|publisher=United Nations}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news |title=Expansion of new districts: New districts expanded in Nay Pyi Taw, regions and states |url=https://www.myanmaritv.com/news/expansion-new-districts-new-districts-expanded-nay-pyi-taw-regions-and-states |work=Myanmar International Television |date=2 May 2022}}</ref>

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.<ref name ="UNDP"/> 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.<ref name=af1>{{cite report |last1=Arnold|first1=Matthew|author2=Ye Thu Aung|last3=Kempel|first3=Susanne|author4=Kyi Pyar Chit Saw|date=July 2015|title=Municipal Governance in Myanmar: An Overview of Developmental Affairs Organisations|url=https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Municipal-Governance-in-Myanmar_Policy-Series_ENG.pdf|publisher=Asia Foundation}}</ref> 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 [[wards of Myanmar|ward]] for urban areas and village for rural areas. Villages are grouped into and administered as [[village tracts]].<ref name="MIMU">{{cite web |title=Summary of the Myanmar P-Code version- 9.2 Mar 2020 |url=https://themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/Pcodes_Read_Me_9.2_20Mar2020.pdf |website=MIMU |publisher=Myanmar Information Management Unit |access-date=4 April 2025}}</ref> 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.<ref name=af1/>

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.<ref>{{cite report|author=Pathein Township|title=မြို့နယ်အထွေထွေအုပ်ချုပ်ရေးဦးစီးဌာန ပုသိမ်မြို့နယ် ဒေသဆိုင်ရာအချက်လက်များ|publisher=Myanmar Information Management Unit}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://displacementsolutions.org/wp-content/uploads/THE-CITY-OF-MANDALAY-DEVELOPMENT-LAW-1992.pdf|title=THE CITY OF MANDALAY DEVELOPMENT LAW (1992)|date=29 December 1992|work=State Law and Order Restoration Council Law|accessdate=27 June 2015|archive-date=30 June 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150630034607/http://displacementsolutions.org/wp-content/uploads/THE-CITY-OF-MANDALAY-DEVELOPMENT-LAW-1992.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/Region_Map_District_Yangon_MIMU764v03_23Oct2017_MMR_A4.pdf |title=Districts in Yangon Region| access-date=13 October 2019 |publisher=Myanmar Information Management Unit| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190303184623/http://themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/Region_Map_District_Yangon_MIMU764v03_23Oct2017_MMR_A4.pdf| archive-date=3 March 2019| url-status=dead}}</ref> The definition of a city is ambiguous with the Burmese term {{lang|my|မြို့}} ('myo') being translated as any urban area. The [[General Administration Department]] only explicitly defines the three cities of [[Yangon]], [[Mandalay]] and [[Naypyidaw]].<ref>{{cite report |title=THEMATIC REPORT ON MIGRATION AND URBANIZATION |url=https://lac.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Migration_insidepages_A4_preview_18May.pdf |pages=109 |author=Department of Population, Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population |publisher=UNFPA |language=en |date=December 2016}}</ref>

==History==
Below is a summary of how Myanmar's first-level administrative divisions have evolved:<ref>{{Cite book |title=Deciphering Myanmar's Ethnic Landscape: A Brief Historical and Ethnic Description of Myanmar's Administrative Units |url=https://www.idea.int/publications/catalogue/deciphering-myanmars-ethnic-landscape-brief-historical-and-ethnic-description |access-date=2025-05-12 |website=International IDEA |date=2022 |language=en |doi=10.31752/idea.2022.57 |last1=Jap |first1=Jangai |last2=Courtin |first2=Constant |isbn=978-91-7671-577-2 }}</ref>
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!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
|}

===British colonisation===
In 1900, Burma was a province of [[British Raj|British India]], and was divided into two subdivisions: [[Lower Myanmar|Lower Burma]], whose capital was Rangoon with four divisions (Arakan, Irrawaddy, Pegu, Tenasserim), and [[Upper Myanmar|Upper Burma]], whose capital was Mandalay with six divisions ([[Meiktila]], Minbu, Sagaing, North Federated Shan States and South Federated Shan States).

On 10 October 1922, the [[Karenni 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.

===Post-independence===
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. [[Möng Pai|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, after [[Ne Win]] introduced a constitution, Chin Special Division became a state, and its capital moved from [[Falam (town)|Falam]] to [[Hakha]]. 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 became [[Mawlamyaing|Moulmein]], and Tenasserim Division's became [[Dawei|Tavoy]]. In addition, Arakan Division was granted statehood.

In 1989, after the [[coup d'état]] by the [[State Peace and Development Council|military junta]], the names of many divisions in Burma were altered in English to reflect [[Burmese language|Burmese]] pronunciations.<ref>[http://www.pcgn.org.uk "An Introduction to the Toponymy of Burma"] The Permanent Committee of Geographic Names (PCGN), United Kingdom, October 2007, accessed 18 April 2010</ref>

After 1995, in Kachin State [[Mohnyin District]] was created out of [[Myitkyina District]] as part of the peace agreement with the [[Kachin Independence Army]].

===2008 Constitution===
The 2008 Constitution stipulates the renaming of the 7 "divisions" ({{lang|my|တိုင်း}} in Burmese) as "regions" ({{lang|my|တိုင်းဒေသကြီး}}<ref name="2008constbur">{{lang|my|ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ (၂၀၀၈ ခုနှစ်)|}} (in Burmese) [http://www.irrawaddy.org/election/component/filecabinet/?task=download&cid[0&#93;=1|2008 Constitution PDF]  {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110501121420/http://www.irrawaddy.org/election/component/filecabinet/?task=download&cid |date=1 May 2011 }}</ref> in Burmese). It also stipulates the creation of Union territories, which include the capital of [[Naypyidaw|Nay Pyi Taw]] and ethnic self-administered zones ({{lang|my|ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ}}<ref name="2008constbur"/> in Burmese) and self-administered divisions ({{lang|my|ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရတိုင်း}}<ref name="2008constbur"/> in Burmese).<ref>Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008)</ref> These self-administered regions include the following:

* [[Danu Self-Administered Zone]]: consisting of [[Ywangan Township|Ywangan]] and [[Pindaya Township|Pindaya]] townships in [[Shan State]]
* [[Kokang Self-Administered Zone]]: consisting of [[Konkyan Township|Konkyan]] and [[Laukkaing Township|Laukkai]] townships in Shan State
* [[Naga Self-Administered Zone]]: consisting of [[Leshi]], [[Lahe, Burma|Lahe]], and [[Nanyun|Namyun]] townships in [[Sagaing Region]]
* [[Pa Laung Self-Administered Zone]]: consisting of [[Namhsan Township|Namhsan]] and [[Mantong Township|Manton]] townships in Shan State
* [[Pa-O Self-Administered Zone]]: consisting of [[Hopong Township|Hopong]], [[Hsi Hseng Township|Hsihseng]], and [[Pinlaung Township|Pinlaung]] townships in Shan State
* [[Wa Self-Administered Division]]: consisting of [[Hopang Township|Hopang]], [[Mongmao Township|Mongmao]], [[Panwai Township|Panwai]], [[Nahpan Township|Nahpan]], [[Metman Township|Metman]], and [[Pangsang Township|Pangsang (Pankham)]] townships in Shan State

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.<ref name="weekly"/>

==See also==
{{portal|Myanmar}}
* [[List of administrative divisions of Myanmar by Human Development Index]]
* [[Districts of Myanmar]]
* [[List of cities and largest towns in Myanmar]]
* [[State and Region Government of Myanmar]]
* [[List of Burmese flags]]
* [[ISO 3166-2:MM]]

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://statoids.com/umm.html Statoids]

{{Administrative divisions of Burma (Myanmar)}}
{{Articles on first-level administrative divisions of Asian countries}}
{{Burma (Myanmar) topics}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Administrative Divisions Of Myanmar}}

[[Category:Lists of subdivisions of Myanmar]]
[[Category:Administrative divisions in Asia|Myanmar]]
[[Category:Subdivisions of Myanmar| ]]