administration offices, the system is very fragile. Replacements have to be signed for by senior officials. This can be costly, particularly for migrant workers who have to take time off to travel to their hometown. The modernisation of the system, registration of individuals without ID, and introduction of digital identity cards has therefore been a priority for recent Myanmar governments, including the NLD Government in its ‘Moe Pwint’ project. In 2013, the Myanmar government announced that it would replace the paper National Registration Card (NRC) with a digital identification card (‘Smart Card’) to include biometric data. In 2019, the government reported that it planned to seek international support to raise the $104 million needed to implement e-ID registration, and $286 million to supply smart ID cards,19 and to seek parliamentary approval for this.20 Many national governments exchanged views on eID with the Myanmar government; for example the Indian government offered to share the lessons of introducing the Aadhar system.21 However, development partners were reluctant to provide funding, due to concerns around how ethnicity, religion and citizenship would be addressed, particularly relating to the Rohingya. Development partners also had concerns about the risks of exclusion of individuals in areas outside of state control, as well as being accused of facilitating the extension of central government control in areas which enjoy some form of autonomy or are seeking it. For example, the World Bank, when designing a ’digital government’ support programme in 2018/2019 (now suspended), declined to be involved in any aspects of a digital ID programme.22 The NLD government established an e-ID System Working Committee in 2019 headed by U Thein Swe, the Minister of Labour Immigration and Population which reported into the e-Government Steering Committee. This was supported by six inter-ministerial sub-committees: Supervision; Planning; Laws and Regulation; Technical and Tender Guidelines Preparation; Funding; and Information and Communications. The structure was to be underpinned by implementation teams at State/region, township and ward/village level. In 2019 the Austrian government was reported to be lending Euro 33 million to the Myanmar government to support the roll-out of a digital identity programme.23 Attempts by MCRB to seek clarification from the Austrian Government and to advocate for human rights risks to be considered were unsuccessful. The Austrian government declined to engage, citing commercial confidentiality. Further reports suggested that this appeared to be an initiative undertaken by the partly state-owned Österreichische Staatsdruckerei (OeSD) (Austrian State Printing House). There were also reports of Myanmar parliamentary approval of a EUR 0.861 million grant and EUR 4.875 million zero-interest loan from Unicredit Bank for implementing public key infrastructure (PKI) for e-IDs for the ‘population registry project’.24 There has been no recent news about this loan. 19 Parliament Pushes for Identity Cards to be Issued to IDPs Irrawaddy, 10 May 2019 https://www.mmtimes.com/news/govt-begins-digitising-personal-information-id-cards.html 21 Personal communication with MCRB 22 https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P167978 23 https://www.mmtimes.com/news/myanmar-receive-austrian-loan-national-e-id-system.html 24 Electronic population registration (e-ID) deserves warm welcomes The Mirror, 27 May 2020, p. 6 and Global New Light of Myanmar 28 July 2020, pg. 1 20 7