Kayin State ( my, ကရင်ပြည်နယ်, ; kjp, ဖၠုံခါန်ႋကၞင့်, italics=no; ksw, ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်, ), also known by the

endonyms An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, o ...

Kawthoolei Kawthoolei ( ksw, ကီၢ်သူလ့ၤ, ; my, ကော့သူးလေ) is the endonym for a proposed state that the Karen have sought to establish in Myanmar since the beginning of the Karen conflict in the late 1940s. Kawthoolei rou ...

and Karen State, is a

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

. The capital city is Hpa-An, also spelled Pa-An. The relief of Karen State is mountainous with the

Dawna Range The Dawna Range (; th, ทิวเขาถนนธงชัยตะวันตก, ทิวเขาดอยมอนกุจู), also known as Dawna Hills, is a mountain range in eastern Burma and northwestern Thailand. Its northern e ...

running along the state in a NNW - SSE direction and the southern end of the

Karen Hills The Karen Hills, () also known as Kayah-Karen Mountains, are one of the main hill ranges in eastern Burma. They are located at the SW corner of Shan State and in Kayah State, a mountainous region where the only relatively flat area is Loikaw, t ...

in the northwest. It is bordered by

Mae Hong Son Mae Hong Son ( th, แม่ฮ่องสอน, ) is a town (''thesaban mueang'') in north-west Thailand, capital of Mae Hong Son Province. It is in the Shan Hills, near the border with Burma along the banks of the River Pai. As of 2018, the to ...

, Tak, and

Kanchanaburi Kanchanaburi ( th, กาญจนบุรี, ) is a town municipality (''thesaban mueang'') in the west of Thailand and part of Kanchanaburi Province. In 2006 it had a population of 31,327. That number was reduced to 25,651 in 2017. The town ...

provinces of

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

to the east;

Mon State Mon State ( my, မွန်ပြည်နယ်, ; mnw, တွဵုရးဍုင်မန်, italics=no) is an administrative division of Myanmar. It lies between Kayin State to the east, the Andaman Sea to the west, Bago Region to the ...

and Bago Region to the west and south;

Mandalay Region Mandalay Region ( my, မန္တလေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး, ; formerly Mandalay Division) is an administrative divisions of Myanmar, administrative division of Myanmar. It is located in the center of the country, bordering ...

Shan State Shan State ( my, ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်, ; shn, မိူင်းတႆး, italics=no) also known by the Endonym and exonym, endonyms Shanland, Muang Tai, and Tailong, is a administrative divisions of Myanmar, state of Myanmar. ...

and

Kayah State Kayah State ( my, ကယားပြည်နယ်, formerly Karenni State) is a state of Myanmar. Situated in eastern Myanmar, it is bounded on the north by Shan State, on the east by Thailand's Mae Hong Son Province, and on the south and we ...

to the north.

History

The region that forms today's Karen State was part of successive Burmese kingdoms since the formation of the

Bagan Empire The Kingdom of Pagan ( my, ပုဂံခေတ်, , ; also known as the Pagan Dynasty and the Pagan Empire; also the Bagan Dynasty or Bagan Empire) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-da ...

in mid-11th century. During the 13th to 16th centuries, much of the region belonged to the

Hanthawaddy Kingdom ( Mon) ( Burmese) , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Hongsarwatoi (Hanthawaddy) Pegu , common_name = Hongsarwatoi (Hanthawaddy) Kingdom / Ramannya (Ramam) , era = Warring states , status = Kingdom , event_pre ...

, while the northern part of the region belonged to

Taungoo Taungoo (, ''Tauñngu myoú''; ; also spelled Toungoo) is a district-level city in the Bago Region of Myanmar, 220 km from Yangon, towards the north-eastern end of the division, with mountain ranges to the east and west. The main industry ...

, a vassal state of

Ava Kingdom The Kingdom of Ava ( my, အင်းဝခေတ်, ) was the dominant kingdom that ruled upper Burma (Myanmar) from 1364 to 1555. Founded in 1365, the kingdom was the successor state to the petty kingdoms of Myinsaing, Pinya and Sagaing t ...

. The region became part of

Taungoo Dynasty , conventional_long_name = Toungoo dynasty , common_name = Taungoo dynasty , era = , status = Empire , event_start = Independence from Ava , year_start ...

and

Konbaung Dynasty The Konbaung dynasty ( my, ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်, ), also known as Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) and formerly known as the Alompra dynasty (အလောင်းဘ ...

from 16th to 19th centuries. The

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

seized the southern third of today's Karen State (below the

Salween River , ''Mae Nam Salawin'' ( , name_etymology = , image = Sweet_View_of_Salween_River_in_Tang_Yan_Township,_Shan_State,_Myanmar.jpg , image_size = , image_caption = Salween River in Shan State, Myanmar , map ...

) after the

First Anglo-Burmese War The First Anglo-Burmese War ( my, ပထမ အင်္ဂလိပ်-မြန်မာ စစ်; ; 5 March 1824 – 24 February 1826), also known as the First Burma War, was the first of three wars fought between the British and Burmese ...

(1824-1826), and the rest after the

Second Anglo-Burmese War The Second Anglo-Burmese War or the Second Burma War ( my, ဒုတိယ အင်္ဂလိပ် မြန်မာ စစ် ; 5 April 185220 January 1853) was the second of the three wars fought between the Burmese Empire and British Em ...

of 1852. Towards the end of the British colonial era (1945-1948), the Karen leadership insisted on a separate state covering today's Karen State and much of

and

Taninthayi Region Tanintharyi Region ( my, တနင်္သာရီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး, ; Mon: or ; ms, Tanah Sari; formerly Tenasserim Division and subsequently Tanintharyi Division, th, ตะนาวศรี, RTGS: ''Tanao Si'', ...

, within the British Empire. They refused to sign the

Panglong Agreement The Panglong Agreement ( my, ပင်လုံစာချုပ် ) was reached in Panglong, Southern Shan State, between the Burmese government under Aung San and the Shan, Kachin, and Chin peoples on 12 February 1947. Aung Zan Wai, Pe ...

of February 1947, which was the basis for the 1947 Constitution of Burma, and boycotted the pre-independence elections of April 1947. Nonetheless, the constitution granted the Karen a state, though with an area less than what the Karen leadership had asked for from the British. The constitution also guaranteed states with the right to secede from the Union after a period of 10 years. (The Panglong Agreement gave only the Shan and the Kachin a state each; the Chin who actually signed the agreement did not receive a state.) The

Karen National Union The Karen National Union ( my, ကရင် အမျိုးသား အစည်းအရုံး; abbreviated KNU) is a political organisation with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), that claims to represent the Ka ...

(KNU), which dominated the Karen leadership, was not satisfied, and wanted outright independence. In 1949, the KNU raised a rebellion that continues up to today.Myint-U, pp. 258-263 The KNU celebrates January 31 as 'revolution day', marking the day they went underground at the battle of Insein. Much of the state has been a battlefield since then. The civilians have taken the brunt of the war. The KNU today forms the world's longest-running resistance. The military government purportedly changed the English name of the state to Kayin State from Karen State in 1989. Since 1976 the KNU has called for a federal system rather than an independent Karen State. In January 2012, Myanmar's military-backed civilian government signed a ceasefire deal with the KNU in Hpa-an, the capital of eastern Kayin State. Aung Min, the Railway Minister, and General Mutu Sae Poe of the KNU led the peace talks.

Geography

Located between latitudes 15° 45' north and 19° 25' north and longitudes 96° 10' east and 98° 28' east. It has a hot and humid climate because of the mountain ranges that lie in its backdrop and its location, which is near the sea, in the tropics. The temperature of the hottest month in eastern mountain regions never falls below . Lowlands in the west and south of the state are located in the tropical monsoon climate. The lowest annual rainfall in the region is and the highest is . The regions get most of the rain in summer. Some of the rivers and creeks in Karen State are flowing from south to north due to the location of the

mountains A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher th ...

. The main rivers in the state are Thanlwin (

), Thaungyin (

Moei River The Moei River (, , , my, သောင်ရင်းမြစ်; ) is a tributary of the Salween River. Unlike most rivers in Thailand, the Moei River flows north in a northwest direction. It originates in Phop Phra District, Tak Province, flow ...

), Gyaing and Attaran.

Government

The government of Kayin State is split into three branches: an executive (

Kayin State Government Kayin State Government ( ksw, ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်ပဒိၣ်) is the cabinet of Kayin State Kayin State ( my, ကရင်ပြည်နယ်, ; kjp, ဖၠုံခါန်ႋကၞင့်, italics=no; ksw, ကညီ ...

), a legislative (

Kayin State Hluttaw Kayin State Hluttaw ( ksw, ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်ဘျီၣ်ဒိၣ်, my, ကရင်ပြည်နယ်လွှတ်တော်) is the legislature of the Burmese state of Kayin State. It is a unicameral body, consisting ...

), and a judicial (

Kayin State High Court Kayin can refer to: * Kayin State, an administrative division of Myanmar (Burma) * Kayin or Karen people, a minority ethnic group in Myanmar * Kayin, Iran, a village in Kerman Province, Iran * alternative spelling for Cain * Kayin Amoh, a charac ...

Administrative divisions

Karen State consists of one city and nine towns. It has four districts, seven townships and 4092 villages. Kayin State Districts Map

Districts

Hpa-an District Hpa-An DistrictHpa-an District
citypopulation ( Myawaddy District *

Kawkareik District Kawkareik District ( Phlone ; ; also called Dooplaya in Karen language) is a district of the Karen State in Myanmar. It consists of 4 towns; Kawkareik, the capital, Kyainseikgyi, Kyondoe, Payathonzu and Kyaikdon; and 552 villages. The population ...

Hpapun District Hpapun District ( Phlone ; my, ဖာပွန်ခရိုင်); or Mutraw District ( ksw, မူထြီကီၢ်ရ့ၣ်) is a district of the Karen State in Myanmar. Area 6.722,5 km2. The principal town is Hpapun. According to 2014 ...

* Kyondoe District

Townships

Hpa-an Township Hpa-an Township ( Phlone ; my, ဘားအံမြို့နယ်, ) is a township of Hpa-an District in the Kayin State of Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require ...

Hlaingbwe Township Hlaingbwe Township ( Phlone ; my, လှိုင်းဘွဲ့မြို့နယ်; ksw, လူၢ်ပျဲၢ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ်) is a township of Hpa-an District in the Kayin State of Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciat ...

Hpapun Township Hpapun Township ( my, ဖာပွန်မြို့နယ်, MLCTS: ''hpa.pwan.mrui.nay''; kjp, ဖာပံင်ကၞင့်; ksw, ဖးဖူကီၢ်ဆၣ်; also known by the Karen people as Mutraw or Bu Tho Township) is a town ...

Thandaunggyi Township Thandaunggyi Township ( Phlone: ; my, သံတောင်ကြီးမြို့နယ်; ksw, သါတီကၠံၤကီၢ်ဆၣ်) is a township of Hpa-an District in the Kayin State of Myanmar. The principal town is Thandangg ...

Myawaddy Township Myawaddy Township ( ksw, ရါမတံၤကီၢ်ဆၣ်, Eastern Pwo language, Phlone ; my, မြဝတီမြို့နယ်) is a Townships of Burma, township of Myawaddy District in the Kayin State of Burma, Burma (Myanmar). It i ...

Kawkareik Township Kawkareik Township ( Phlone ; my, ကော့ကရိတ်မြို့နယ်, ; ksw, ကီၢ်ကရံၣ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ်) is a township of Kawkareik District in the Karen State of Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciati ...

* Kyainseikgyi Township

Cities and towns

Villages and hamlets

Due to the mountainous terrain in Karen State, most villages are small and contain less than 40 households so a large amount of Karen's population is dotted across the countryside over hundreds, if not thousands of villages.

Demographics

Population

Since the 1973 Census, the population of Karen State has increased from 858,429 to 1,055,359 in the 1983 census and 1,574,079 in the census of 2014. This means the population of Karen State has increased by about 49 percent between the 1983 and the 2014 census. The population of Karen State ranks eleventh in size when compared with other States and Regions in the country, only higher than Tanintharyi Region, Nay Pyi Taw Union Territory and Chin State. In terms of the proportion of the total population, the population of Karen State has marginally increased from 3.0 percent in 1983 to 3.1 percent in 2014.

Religion

According to the 2014 Myanmar Census,

Buddhists Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

, who make up 84.5% of Kayin State’s population, form the largest religious community there. Minority religious communities include

Christians Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

(9.5%),

Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...

(4.6%),

Hindus Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

(0.6%), and

animists Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, hu ...

(0.1%) who collectively comprise the remainder of Kayin State’s population. 0.7% of the population listed no religion, other religions, or were otherwise not enumerated. According to the

State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee The State Saṅgha Mahā Nāyaka Committee ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် သံဃာ့မဟာနာယကအဖွဲ့, abbreviated Mahana or in Burmese, SSMNC in English) is a government-appointed body of high-ranking Buddhis ...

’s 2016 statistics, 14,080 Buddhist monks were registered in Kayin State, comprising 2.6% of Myanmar's total

Sangha Sangha is a Sanskrit word used in many Indian languages, including Pali meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community"; Sangha is often used as a surname across these languages. It was historically used in a political context t ...

membership, which includes both novice

samanera A sāmaṇera (Pali); sa, श्रामणेर (), is a novice male monastic in a Buddhist context. A female novice is a ''śrāmaṇerī'' or ''śrāmaṇerikā'' (Sanskrit; Pāli: ''sāmaṇerī''). Etymology The ''sāmaṇera'' is a ...

and fully-ordained bhikkhu. The majority of monks belong to the

Thudhamma Nikaya Thudhamma Nikaya ( my, သုဓမ္မာနိကာယ, ; also spelt Sudhammā Nikāya) is the largest monastic order of monks in Burma. It is one of 9 legally sanctioned monastic orders (''nikāya'') in the country, under the 1990 Law Co ...

(89%), followed by

Shwegyin Nikaya Shwegyin Nikāya (, ; also spelt Shwekyin Nikāya) is the second largest monastic order of monks in Burma. It is one of nine legally sanctioned monastic orders (''nikāya'') in the country, under the 1990 Law Concerning Sangha Organizations. Sh ...

(9.7%), with the remainder of monks belonging to other small

monastic orders Monasticism (from Ancient Greek , , from , , 'alone'), also referred to as monachism, or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic life plays an important role ...

. 1,000

thilashin A ( my, သီလရှင်, ,( mnw, သဳလ, ), "possessor of morality", from Pali '' sīla'') is a female renunciant in Burmese Buddhism; a Burmese Theravada Buddhist nun. They are not fully ordained nuns, as the full ordination is not ...

were registered in Kayin State, comprising 1.7% of Myanmar’s total thilashin community.

Economy

Tourism

Tourism is one of the main economy of Karen State. After the signing of the preliminary

ceasefire A ceasefire (also known as a truce or armistice), also spelled cease fire (the antonym of 'open fire'), is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be between state act ...

between the KNU and the

Myanmar government Myanmar ( also known as Burma) operates ''de jure'' as a unitary assembly-independent republic under its 2008 constitution. On 1 February 2021, Myanmar's military took over the government in a coup, causing ongoing anti-coup protests. ...

in 2012, the number of visitors to Karen State increased largely. Karen State experienced over 40,000 tourists in 2013, followed by 50,000 in 2014. In 2016, the number of visitors reached a record 150,000.

Border Trade

Myawaddy Myawaddy ( Phlone ;myမဝတဳ my, မြဝတီ; th, เมียวดี; ; ) is a town in southeastern Myanmar, in Kayin State, close to the border with Thailand. Separated from the Thai border town of Mae Sot by the Moei River (Tha ...

border trading post of Karen State is the second biggest among Myanmar's 15 border trading posts. It is the main border crossing trade route between Thailand and Myanmar. According to Thailand's Chamber of Commerce, the monthly trade between the two countries in 2015 through the

Mae Sot Mae Sot ( th, แม่สอด, ; my, မဲဆောက်, ; shn, , ) is a city in western Thailand that shares a border with Myanmar to the west. It is notable as a trade hub and for its substantial population of Burmese migrants and refug ...

to Myawaddy crossing was worth over 3 billion

baht The baht (; th, บาท, ; sign: ฿; code: THB) is the official currency of Thailand. It is divided into 100 ''satang'' (, ). The issuance of currency is the responsibility of the Bank of Thailand. SWIFT ranked the Thai baht as the 10th-m ...

(about 90 million US dollar). Thanlwin Bridge 2

Agriculture

Karen State is a farming state. Currently, there are over 460,000 acres of paddy fields and 260,000 acres of rubber tree plantations in Karen State. There is over 9000 acres of coffee land in Thandaung area. The

Kayin State government Kayin State Government ( ksw, ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်ပဒိၣ်) is the cabinet of Kayin State Kayin State ( my, ကရင်ပြည်နယ်, ; kjp, ဖၠုံခါန်ႋကၞင့်, italics=no; ksw, ကညီ ...

is trying to implement new farming technology to improve its agriculture sector.

Industry

In 2016, the government announced a strategy to attract domestic and foreign investors to the Hpa-An industrial zone. However, shortage of electricity supply hinders the development of Hpa-An industrial zone. The

in conjunction with a Japanese company has been trying to carry out a feasibility survey for an 1800-megawatt coal-fired power plant to fulfill the need of electricity supply. On the other hand, community members and local environmental groups have raised concerns about the potential impacts from coal plant emissions.

Transport

Karen State is served by Hpapun Airport and Hpa-An Airport but none of those currently use for public transportation. In 2015, the

Asian Development Bank The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established on 19 December 1966, which is headquartered in the Ortigas Center located in the city of Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines. The bank also maintains 31 field office ...

(ADB) approved a $100 million loan to improve a 66.4 kilometer section of road connecting the towns of Eindu and Kawkareik in Kayin state, the missing link of the

Greater Mekong Subregion The Greater Mekong Subregion, (GMS) or just Greater Mekong, is a trans-national region of the Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia. The region is home to more than 300 million people. It came into being with the launch of a development program i ...

(GMS) East-West Corridor.

Education

Major universities in Kayin state include Hpa-An University, Computer University, Hpa-An and Technological University, Hpa-An. Educational opportunities in Myanmar are limited outside the main cities of

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

and Mandalay. It is especially a problem in Karen State where constant fighting between the government and insurgents for over 60 years has produced thousands of refugees and internally displaced people. According to official statistics, less than 10% of primary school students in Karen State reach high school. All the institutions of higher education are located in Hpa-An City.

Health care

The general state of health care in Myanmar is poor. Although health care is nominally free, in reality, patients have to pay for medicine and treatment, even in public clinics and hospitals. Public hospitals lack some basic facilities and equipment. In general, the health care infrastructure outside of

and Mandalay is poor but is especially worse in conflict ridden areas like Karen State. The public health care system in the state is very poor. The following is a summary of the public health care system in the state.

References

External links

Burma's Longest War: Anatomy of the Karen Conflict
2011, Ashley South at the Transnational Institute
"Planning Map Kayin State"
2008, Myanmar Information Management Unit (MIMU) {{Administrative divisions of Burma (Myanmar) States of Myanmar Karen people