Administrative Divisions of Burma

Administrative Divisions Of Burma

Burma (also known as Myanmar) is divided into twenty-one administrative subdivisions, which include

• seven states (ပြည်နယ်; pyi ne, ),
• seven regions (တိုင်းဒေသကြီး; taing detha gyi, ),
• five self-administered zones (ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ; ) and
• one self-administered division (ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရ တိုင်း; ).

The regions were called divisions prior to August 2010, and five of them are named after their capital city, the exceptions being Ayeyarwady Region and Tanintharyi Region. The regions can be described as ethnically predominantly Burman (Bamar), while the states, the zones and Wa Division are ethnic minority-dominant.

Mandalay Region has the largest population and Yangon Region is the most densely populated. The smallest population is Kayah State. In terms of land area, Shan State is the largest and Yangon Region is the smallest.

States and divisions are divided into districts (ခရိုင်; kha yaing or khayai, ). These districts consist of townships (မြို့နယ်; myo ne, ) that include towns (မြို့; myo, ), wards (ရပ်ကွက်; yat kwet, )) and village-tracts (ကျွေးရွာအုပ်စု; kyay ywa ok su, ). Village-tracts are groups of adjacent villages (ကျေးရွာ; kyay ywa, ).