Chapter 1. Preparations and Assurances of Self-Identification
Preparing the Questionnaire and the Enumerators
The preparations for the 2014 census included a pilot exercise conducted from 30 March to 10 April 2013. According to UNFPA’s contemporary account, one hundred trained schoolteachers visited households in twenty selected townships. Enumerators and supervisors received five days of training, while observers examined whether questions were asked correctly, answers recorded accurately and households adequately informed. The questionnaire contained forty-one questions covering household members and their living conditions, including ethnicity and religion. The pilot therefore provided an opportunity to examine the interview process a full year before nationwide enumeration.
For Rohingya respondents, the decisive safeguard would be the handling of the answer they gave. A census worker would enter information on their behalf, making the instructions governing that worker essential. Training had to establish whether a respondent’s stated identity would be accepted even when it differed from the government’s preferred terminology. Testing the mechanics of an interview could not, by itself, settle that question.
The Ethnicity List and the Write-In Option
The proposed coding system distinguished between the government’s list of 135 ethnic categories and additional categories for people outside that list. Rohingya were not provided with a named category. The available route for recording their identity was the write-in provision associated with code 914, designated “Other.” That number was a general category; it was not a specific code recognizing Rohingya ethnicity.
The distinction matters because contemporary discussion sometimes treated the existence of code 914 as evidence that Rohingya had obtained official recognition. Radio Free Asia’s report of 13 March 2014 recorded Department of Population Director-General Myint Kyaing explaining that the code applied to people outside the official list. At the same time, he said the form allowed respondents to write a group or name by which they wished to identify themselves. His explanation preserved a narrow opening for recording Rohingya answers while maintaining the government’s refusal to recognize Rohingya as a national ethnic group.
Rohingya Political Parties Challenged the Categories
Rohingya political representatives questioned the questionnaire’s structure before the final preparations were complete. The Transnational Institute and Burma Centrum Netherlands’ February 2014 briefing documented objections from representatives of two Rohingya parties. It cited contemporary reporting on the National Democratic Party for Development and the Democracy and Human Rights Party, whose representatives sought changes to the census categories.
The briefing also identified a revealing difference between the language versions of the code list. In English, code 914 grouped other ethnicities in Myanmar together with other foreigners; the Burmese wording simply designated “Other.” For a community whose opponents routinely portrayed it as foreign, this arrangement created an obvious concern: recording an identity outside the recognized list might place it within a category associated with foreign origin. The briefing warned about possible recording under either the Bangladesh category or “Other,” describing a risk anticipated before enumeration rather than an established account of what every enumerator subsequently did.
A Promise Conveyed to Rohingya Parliamentarians
A Rohingya account published during the preparations provides further evidence of assurances reaching community representatives. In “Verification of Rohingya in Arakan,” published by Kaladan Press Network on 15 February 2014, Nurul Islam wrote that Immigration Minister Khin Yi had previously told Rohingya members of parliament that the government would not object to use of the Rohingya name in the forthcoming census.
Islam also reported contradictory instructions at the local level. According to his account, officials at a Maungdaw administrative meeting on 1 January 2014 directed village administrators to use “Bengali” in verification activities and instructed immigration personnel to press that designation in the coming census. These are claims from a contemporary Rohingya-authored account, rather than a published transcript of the meetings. Their importance lies in the inconsistency they identified before the nationwide count: assurances conveyed by the minister did not necessarily correspond to the instructions reportedly circulating among local officials.
What UNFPA Said Respondents Could Expect
In an interview published by the Democratic Voice of Burma on 22 March 2014 and reproduced by UNFPA on 26 March, UNFPA representatives Janet Jackson and Hla Hla Aye described the safeguards intended to govern participation. They stated that individuals could decide their own ethnicity, including mixed identities, and that responses entered through the “Other” provision would receive separate coding during data processing. They also affirmed respondents’ entitlement to an explanation of the census and emphasized answering without fear or coercion.
The same interview promised confidentiality: information about individual people, households or institutions would not be accessible to others. UNFPA described confidentiality as part of a written commitment signed with the United Nations in April 2012. These assurances addressed two distinct requirements—faithful recording of an answer and protection against its disclosure. Both mattered to families being asked to entrust sensitive information to government enumerators.
Community Members as Enumerators
The possibility of recruiting enumerators from Rohingya communities was discussed internationally during the planning period. In evidence to the British Parliament’s International Development Committee on 23 January 2014, development minister Alan Duncan said enumeration in Rohingya villages and displacement camps would probably be undertaken by members of the communities themselves. DFID’s Burma head, Gavin McGillivray, confirmed that enumerators would undergo training.
Duncan’s statement was an expectation, not confirmation that community-based enumeration had been secured everywhere. Nevertheless, it shows that donor discussions recognized the importance of who would conduct interviews. Local participation could assist communication and confidence, particularly where households distrusted outside officials. It would still require clear authority for enumerators to record the identity given by respondents.
BROUK Raised the Census Before Enumeration
Rohingya advocacy also brought the preparations before international audiences. Kaladan Press Network’s report of 25 March recorded BROUK President Tun Khin’s intervention at a side event during the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva on 17 March 2014. He emphasized the importance of recording the Rohingya name and challenged international support for a census that risked discriminating against the community.
His intervention connected the proposed census to immediate protection concerns. According to the report, he warned that agitation against Rohingya registration could contribute to further violence and questioned why international donors were supporting an exercise carrying those risks. This was a warning delivered while participation was still being promoted, demonstrating that Rohingya objections were already being communicated beyond local administrative channels.
Warnings About the Preparation Process
Burma Campaign UK’s February 2014 briefing, Burma’s Census: Not Worth Dying For, challenged the assumption that better publicity could resolve the difficulties. It identified inadequate consultation, disputed ethnic categories and language barriers as substantive problems. Census questionnaires were principally in Burmese, apart from some English forms for foreign residents. The organization warned that respondents could be uncertain whether an enumerator’s written entry accurately represented what they had said.
A later UNFPA evaluation offered a related finding about consultation. It concluded that the National Advisory Committee’s first meeting in November 2013 came too late to meaningfully influence questionnaire design and enumeration arrangements. Some civil society participants described consultations as information sessions rather than substantial dialogue. These findings help distinguish informing communities about an already designed exercise from allowing them to shape its safeguards.
By the final weeks of preparation, the unresolved issue was therefore practical and specific: what instruction would prevail when a household answered “Rohingya”? Political representatives had challenged the categories, Rohingya advocates had raised concerns internationally, and census partners had publicly described procedures intended to protect self-identification. Whether those procedures would govern the actual encounter between a family and an enumerator remained the test.