Richard Roewer · 2018
Richard Roewer welcomes the Socio-Economic Atlas of Myanmar as the first publication of its kind, praising its extensive data and accessible visualizations across administration, environment, population, infrastructure, economic development and social development. He highlights its value for research and policymaking, including coverage of environment, natural resources and infrastructure absent from the 2014 Myanmar Census Atlas. His principal criticisms concern insufficient reflection on the atlas's perspective and inadequate explanation of data quality, review and selection beyond its GIS section. He argues that its treatment of ethnicity fails to explain that the 2014 Census collected data whose findings the ministry withheld, and that its unexplained phrase “so-called Rohingya issue” questions the legitimacy of the term. He also criticizes its extensive use of census data without discussing allegations of incomplete questioning, the absence of a post-enumeration survey, inadequate civil-society consultation and politicized ethnic classification. Roewer argues that addressing these issues would help readers assess data reliability and reduce the atlas's vulnerability to criticism, while maintaining that it offers a basis for further research and debate about data gathering in Myanmar.
