Chapter 5. UNFPA, Donor Governments and International Responsibility
The international responsibility surrounding Myanmar’s 2014 census extended beyond objections to the government’s exclusion of Rohingya. UN agencies and donor governments had supplied funding, expertise and public endorsement to the exercise. Once its discriminatory conduct became clear, those institutions faced a further decision: whether to continue supporting the project, reconsider their involvement or require an effective remedy. For Rohingya, the central question was what international support would mean when the population being counted was denied equal treatment.
The International Funding Behind the Census
UNFPA’s funding account placed the census’s estimated cost at US$58.5 million. Myanmar’s government committed US$15 million, while UNFPA committed US$5 million from its core resources. These were planning figures and commitments, rather than a final audited account of expenditure. UNFPA also established a pooled funding mechanism through which international contributions could be managed.
The agency listed financial support from Australia, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Germany, Italy and Sweden. The United States supplied technical assistance. This distinction matters: participation in the project took different forms, and financial contributions should not be attributed to every government involved. Nevertheless, the breadth of assistance establishes that the census was an international development undertaking as well as a Myanmar government operation. Its conduct therefore raised questions about the safeguards attached to outside support.
Britain’s Diplomatic Protest and Its Limits
Britain was a major financial supporter, providing £10 million towards the census. Its ministers also defended engagement with the exercise as an opportunity to obtain information needed for development. The exclusion of Rohingya consequently challenged both a funding decision and the credibility of British diplomatic assurances.
In a parliamentary answer on 28 April 2014, Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire recorded that he had spoken to Immigration Minister Khin Yi on 26 March about self-identification, international observation and security. Swire then confirmed that Myanmar’s ambassador had been summoned to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 7 April. At that meeting, he had challenged the government’s departure from international census norms and standards.
This was a documented diplomatic protest. It should be recorded without treating the protest itself as a remedy: an ambassadorial summons did not establish that excluded Rohingya households had subsequently been counted or that their identity had been accepted.
Australia’s Call for International Standards
Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop issued a statement on 6 April calling for the census to follow international standards, including in Arakan, identified as Rakhine State in the release. Her statement also demanded a safe environment for humanitarian personnel and drew attention to communities deprived of essential services following the withdrawal of aid workers.
Australia’s response placed census standards alongside immediate humanitarian protection. However, the release did not announce the withdrawal of Australian census funding or specify a corrective enumeration arrangement for Rohingya. Its significance lies in the position publicly taken by a participating donor government, rather than evidence that the discrimination had been reversed.
The Demand to Withdraw International Endorsement
On 2 April, Burma Campaign UK called on UNFPA, Britain’s Department for International Development and other donors to withdraw their political, technical and financial support. The organization argued that continued involvement risked endorsing discriminatory policies against Rohingya.
Its statement distinguished money already spent from political credibility still being supplied. Even if much of the funding had already been disbursed, international institutions could still reconsider their public endorsement. Director Mark Farmaner argued that expressions of concern were insufficient while donors continued lending legitimacy to the exercise.
This was an advocacy demand, rather than an announcement that donors had withdrawn. Its importance was the alternative it placed before participating institutions: they could acknowledge discrimination while maintaining their relationship with the project, or make their continued support conditional on a substantive change. From a Rohingya perspective, the second option addressed the practical meaning of international involvement more directly than another statement of disappointment.
Calls for an Inquiry into British Funding
On 9 April, Burma Campaign UK asked International Development Secretary Justine Greening to commission an inquiry into the decision to fund the census. The proposed inquiry concerned how the decision had been reached, including the assumptions about Myanmar’s political reform on which British support rested.
This shifted attention from the government’s final conduct to the judgment exercised by its international partners. The organization argued that donors had proceeded despite warnings and that their understanding of President Thein Sein’s government had been excessively optimistic. These were campaigners’ criticisms of British policy, not findings from an official inquiry.
By 30 June, Burma Campaign UK reported that more than a thousand people had written to Greening requesting an investigation. It also reported that DFID had not yet responded to those calls. That statement documents the campaign’s position at that date; it should not be extended into a claim about every subsequent departmental response.
International Crisis Group’s Criticism of Donor Decision-Making
The International Crisis Group’s briefing, Counting the Costs: Myanmar’s Problematic Census, published on 15 May 2014, examined how international institutions had organized their involvement. It argued that the census had received insufficient attention within the UN at a senior political level and that UNFPA had been left handling problems beyond a narrowly technical undertaking.
The briefing also examined the donor group. According to its investigation, responsibility initially fell to officials whose existing portfolios and workloads limited their ability to assess census risks. Conflict advisers became more involved during 2013, but the organization concluded that donors had failed to use their available influence adequately.
By late 2013, it reported, growing concern had not produced a willingness to recommend postponement or the removal of contentious questions. The cost of changing already printed forms was among the considerations cited. These findings located responsibility in institutional decisions about expertise, timing and leverage—not simply in whether warnings had been received.
UNFPA’s Defence of Its Risk Management
UNFPA responded publicly on 17 May. It stated that it had commissioned a political risk assessment, presented its findings to the government and donors, and incorporated technical, administrative, logistical and political risks into a framework developed after the pilot census.
The agency said partners had monitored that framework through monthly meetings, with discussions becoming more frequent and eventually weekly during early 2014. It also pointed to revisions of the training manual and efforts to encourage the recruitment of local enumerators. UNFPA presented these measures as evidence that political sensitivity had received sustained attention.
The disagreement therefore concerned the adequacy and effectiveness of risk management, rather than the existence of any activity under that description. UNFPA’s account records what the agency said it had undertaken. The exclusion of Rohingya requires a separate assessment of whether those measures protected the people whose equal participation was at risk.
What the Later Independent Evaluation Found
The independent Myanmar case study produced through UNFPA’s Evaluation Office, dated January 2016, provides a further institutional assessment. It found that the agency had lacked a consistent position across country and regional levels on the inclusion of the ethnicity question. It also recorded that donors themselves had not developed a clear position and had insufficiently promoted dialogue over alternative approaches.
The evaluation identified a broader weakness: UNFPA did not have a sufficiently established corporate policy framework to guide census support when technical decisions carried particularly sensitive political implications. Its assessment of the original support arrangements emphasized that staffing and operational choices had not adequately incorporated those implications.
These findings distribute responsibility more widely than a simple account of an agency misled by its government partner. They identify shortcomings within UNFPA’s institutional arrangements and within donor engagement. They are findings of an independent evaluation published through the agency’s Evaluation Office, rather than a judicial determination of wrongdoing.
Parliamentary Scrutiny and Continued Engagement
Britain’s Foreign Affairs Committee examined the census in its report on the Foreign Office’s human rights work, published in November 2014. It recorded the financial support, the government’s broken assurances, Swire’s objections and Burma Campaign UK’s criticism of British judgment.
The committee nevertheless accepted, on balance, the British government’s broader argument that Myanmar was making progress towards democracy and that diplomacy remained the preferred approach to improving human rights. The report therefore illustrates an important policy tension: recognition of serious failures did not necessarily displace confidence in continued engagement.
For Rohingya, that tension had practical significance. A government could be criticized for a discriminatory decision while retaining the international relationships through which its reform programme received support. The committee’s position should be understood as a political judgment about engagement, not evidence that the exclusion had been corrected.
International Assistance Examined from a Rohingya Perspective
Later research has examined the census within the wider relationship between international development institutions and Rohingya persecution. In a 2026 scholarly chapter, Penny Green and Thomas MacManus interpret UN support for the exercise as part of a broader failure to confront the structures through which Rohingya identity and participation were denied.
Their analysis challenges the assumption that a development project becomes protective merely because it promises better information or improved services. When exclusion is built into the operation, international support can help sustain the authority of the institutions producing that exclusion. This is the authors’ scholarly interpretation and should be attributed accordingly, rather than presented as a court finding against the UN.
Applied to the documented decisions of 2014, the question is concrete: did international partners require equal treatment to be secured, or did they continue treating that requirement as an aspiration alongside the completion of the project?
Responsibility Beyond Statements of Concern
Myanmar’s authorities made and enforced the discriminatory decision. International partners carried a different responsibility arising from the assistance, influence and credibility they supplied. Those roles should be examined together without treating them as identical.
The record shows diplomatic objections, demands for withdrawal, calls for an inquiry, an institutional defence and subsequent evaluation. It also shows disagreement about how much international partners could—and should—have done. From a Rohingya perspective, the measure of an effective response was whether it secured a route to equal participation. Acknowledging exclusion was necessary, but acknowledgment alone did not restore the place denied to Rohingya in an internationally supported census.