Dispatches: What Burma’s Census Missed

The preliminary results of Burma’s first nationwide census since 1983 were released in Rangoon last Saturday, providing an answer to the vexing question of the actual population, estimates of which varied between 44 to 59 million for a decade. The new tally (minus some low-population areas of northern Karen State and Kachin State not included because of security concerns) is 51.4 million […]

Poorly Planned Census in Disarray as Calls for Postponement Grow Stronger

Enumerators arrived in Arakan State on Sunday, 30 March in the company of three hundred armed policemen who were brought into the area in several army trucks to conduct the nationwide survey. The first national census since 1983 should be vital in planning the nation’s needs in health, education and development. However, the census has triggered violence in Arakan State, as humanitarian aid offices were raided, aid workers fled, local aid workers threatened not to assist the Rohingya, and aid to the Rohingya communities living in internally displaced camps has halted.

So far three people – two under the age of five – have died as a result of the absence of medical care and food prices are soaring as water and food becomes scarce. The Burma government has rescinded their commitment to allow Rohingya’s to self-identify, folding under pressure from Arakanese Buddhists to boycott the census.  The tension in Arakan State is spreading throughout Burma as an anti-Muslim riot took place in a town on the outskirts of Rangoon, where an angry Buddhist mob pelted Muslim-owned properties with stones[…]

Burmese Muslim Association Statement on Violence Against Aid Agencies in Arakan State and the Census

Burmese Muslim Association (BMA) is deeply concerned by the recent attacks on international aid agencies in Sittwe, Arakan State, on 26th and 27th March 2014. BMA condemns these attacks in the strongest possible terms […]

UNFPA Statement on Myanmar Census and Violence in Rakhine State

YANGON—UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is very concerned about the mob attacks on international NGO and UN offices in Sittwe yesterday, and supports the call by the UN Resident Coordinator/Humanitarian Coordinator (a.i.) on the Government to ensure the protection of the humanitarian and development community in Rakhine State […]

Burma: Postpone Flawed Census to Avert Violence

(New York) – Burma’s national government should postpone the planned nationwide census to prevent growing communal violence and attacks on the aid community, Human Rights Watch said today. At greatest risk are vulnerable Muslim communities and aid workers from international organizations […]

Karen Worldwide Call for Burma’s Census to be Postponed

28 Karen community organisations from 11 countries are writing to the United Nations Population Fund and their respective governments, expressing deep concern over Burma’s upcoming census, and calling for it to be postponed […]

UNPFA IS LAUCHING 2014 POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUS ON 1ST MARCH 2014 DESPITE THE WORNG ETHNICITY CODING, WITHOUT INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY CONSULTATION AND APPROVAL

We, the Kachin National Organisation, are extremely concerned that Ms. Janet Jackson, UNFPA Representative is planning to launch controversial ‘2014 Population and Housing Census on 1st March 2014’ despite the incorrect ethnicity coding and without proper inclusive community consultation with ethnic nationalities […]