Myanmar’s planned election has drawn predictable international condemnation. Widely dismissed as a hollow exercise organized by a military regime that seized power through force, the vote is seen less as a democratic milestone than as an attempt to manufacture legitimacy. Yet the fixation on ballots and polling stations risks obscuring a far more consequential political act now unfolding in parallel: the junta’s accelerated nationwide census. Unlike an election, which may be boycotted, contested, or overturned, a census has enduring power. It defines who exists politically in the state’s official imagination-and who does not.

In Myanmar’s fractured landscape of civil war, displacement, and ethnic exclusion, the census is not a neutral administrative exercise. It is an act of authority that will shape citizenship, representation, land ownership, public spending, and legal rights for decades. Conducted amid mass displacement and territorial fragmentation, it risks hard-wiring exclusion into the country’s postwar order. For the Rohingya in particular, and for millions of internally displaced people across the country, being left out of the count could lock in erasure long after the last vote is cast.

Elections come and go. Censuses endure. While elections reflect a moment in time, censuses establish the baseline from which the state governs. They determine electoral boundaries, allocate parliamentary seats, justify infrastructure investment, and underpin citizenship frameworks. In stable societies, this makes the census a technical task with political implications. In Myanmar’s current context, it makes the census a political weapon.

The authorities are pushing ahead with enumeration even as vast areas of the country remain beyond their control and entire communities have been driven from their homes. According to United Nations estimates, more than three million people are internally displaced by fighting between the military and resistance forces. Over a million Rohingya remain stranded in refugee camps in Bangladesh, many after fleeing systematic violence and mass atrocities. A census that counts only those populations accessible to the state will inevitably undercount minorities, border communities, and anyone forced to flee. That outcome is not a statistical accident. It is a political result.

For the Rohingya, the stakes are existential. Their exclusion from Myanmar’s 2014 census-when many were denied the right to self-identify and categorized under ambiguous labels-played a critical role in legitimizing their marginalization. That absence helped pave the way for the stripping of citizenship, the denial of basic rights, and ultimately the campaign of violence that drove hundreds of thousands across the border. Repeating a similar exercise now, under conditions of even greater displacement and insecurity, risks cementing statelessness into Myanmar’s future legal and political architecture.

Once a population is absent from the official record, its claims to land, return, and political participation become far easier to dismiss. Census data becomes evidence: proof that a community is marginal, insignificant, or nonexistent. In bureaucratic terms, absence becomes justification. In political terms, it becomes erasure.

The census also exposes the central contradiction at the heart of the junta’s electoral project. A vote conducted on the basis of an incomplete and exclusionary population register cannot confer legitimacy. Instead, it formalizes a narrower polity-one aligned with military control and ethnic hierarchy. The resulting parliament, if convened, will reflect neither Myanmar’s demographic reality nor the political aspirations of its people. It will be a legislature built on omission.

This dynamic matters far beyond Myanmar’s borders. Bangladesh, already hosting one of the world’s largest refugee populations, faces growing strain as international attention and funding decline. If Myanmar’s census renders Rohingya return legally and politically implausible, Dhaka will be left managing what is effectively a permanent displacement crisis. Aid fatigue, tighter camp restrictions, and renewed boat movements across the Bay of Bengal are not isolated developments. They are symptoms of a deeper political failure upstream.

Inside Myanmar, the census will also shape relations with de facto authorities in contested regions. Ethnic armed organizations now control large swaths of territory, providing governance, security, and services to local populations. These groups have little incentive to cooperate with an enumeration process that excludes their constituents or denies their authority. Proceeding regardless will deepen fragmentation and normalize parallel systems of governance. Far from stabilizing the country, the census risks entrenching de facto partition.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Rakhine State. Control on the ground has shifted dramatically, with the Arakan Army consolidating power across much of the region. Yet neither the military nor the Arakan Army has demonstrated a genuine willingness to recognize Rohingya identity or rights. A census conducted under these conditions will reflect the preferences of armed actors rather than the rights of displaced civilians. It will also shape any future negotiations by establishing a demographic baseline that excludes the very population whose return is essential to lasting peace.

Regional actors cannot afford to treat this as a purely internal administrative matter. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has long favored procedural engagement with Myanmar, emphasizing dialogue, consensus, and technical steps while avoiding political red lines. But silence in the face of an exclusionary census is not neutrality. It is acquiescence. By accepting the process as a prerequisite for elections, ASEAN risks legitimizing outcomes that will perpetuate displacement and instability across Southeast Asia.

The international community bears responsibility as well. Years of rhetorical support for Rohingya repatriation have not been matched by a coherent strategy to secure political inclusion. Too often, humanitarian assistance has substituted for diplomacy, while accountability has been deferred to an undefined future transition. A census that erases the Rohingya would foreclose both return and justice, transforming temporary displacement into a permanent condition by default.

There is still time to act. International actors should make clear that census data produced under conditions of conflict and mass displacement cannot be treated as authoritative for elections, representation, or citizenship policy. Donors should condition technical and financial support on minimum standards of inclusion and transparency, including recognition of displaced populations and refugees as part of the national community. Regional governments should insist that any political process explicitly protects minority identity and rights rather than burying them in administrative procedures.

For Bangladesh, this moment demands a strategic shift. Managing the camps is no longer enough. Dhaka must press for sustained political engagement that addresses the foundational question of who is counted and who is not, including dialogue with all relevant power-holders inside Myanmar. Without such engagement, the burden will continue to fall disproportionately on Bangladesh while decisions that determine the refugees’ future are made elsewhere.

Myanmar’s tragedy did not begin with an election, and it will not end with one. The census now underway will outlast the current news cycle and shape the country’s political geography for a generation. If it proceeds without inclusion, it will not simply measure the population. It will decide which communities are allowed to exist in Myanmar’s future-and which are written out of it altogether.

READER’S REACTION

Jennifer Hicks has many factual errors Myanmar’s census, not the least of which is that it is still going on. It finished in early 2025.

She is absolutely right about the enduring and underestimate power of censuses to erase whole populations, and many Myanmar experts wrote about that last year when the census was under way.

I suspect she is confuses the census with the two other processes: national registration and the issuance of biometric smart cards (which occurs under a different ministry) and spurts of forced relocation under the name of land titling (also different ministry). Those are ongoing. The census is not.

I have spent the last 36 years researching Burma, and worked on the 2014 Population and Housing Census (no, more like I tried to shut it down) from within the Ministry of Immigration. I also worked on the 2019 Intercensal Survey and mounted a 6 month research project, with a dozen team members inside the country on last year’s census.

I have seen the piece has been picked up by other outlets and shared on Facebook. I assume Jennifer has no malintentions but is instead a victim of misinformation. Her piece only spreads misinformation and makes it possible for bad faith actors to create disinformation.

Mary P. Callahan, University of Washington

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