Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

, district or ambiguously subdistrict, is the third-level

administrative subdivision Administrative divisions (also administrative units, administrative regions, subnational entities, or constituent states, as well as many similar generic terms) are geographical areas into which a particular independent sovereign state is divi ...

, below

regency In a monarchy, a regent () is a person appointed to govern a state because the actual monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge their powers and duties, or the throne is vacant and a new monarch has not yet been dete ...

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

. The local term is used in the majority of Indonesian areas. The term is used in provinces in Papua. In the

Special Region of Yogyakarta The Special Region of Yogyakarta is a province-level special region of Indonesia in southern Java. It is a semi-enclave that is surrounded by on the landward side by Central Java Province to the west, north, and east, but has a long coastline ...

, the term ''kapanewon'' is used for districts within the regencies, while the term ' is used for districts within

Yogyakarta Yogyakarta is the capital city of the Special Region of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, in the south-central part of the island of Java. As the only Indonesian royal city still ruled by Hamengkubuwono, a monarchy, Yogyakarta is regarded as an importan ...

, the province's only city. According to

Statistics Indonesia Statistics Indonesia (), is a non-departmental government institute of Indonesia that is responsible for conducting statistical surveys. Its main customer is the government, but statistical data is also available to the public. Annual surveys c ...

, there are a total of 7,288 districts in Indonesia as of 2023, subdivided into 83,971 administrative villages (rural ' and urban '). During the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies (; ), was a Dutch Empire, Dutch colony with territory mostly comprising the modern state of Indonesia, which Proclamation of Indonesian Independence, declared independence on 17 Au ...

and early republic period, the term ''district'' referred to ''kewedanan'', a subdivision of regency, while ' was translated as ''subdistrict'' (). Following the abolition of ''kewedanan'', the term ''district'' began to be associated with ' which has since been directly administered by regency. Mainstream media such as ''

The Jakarta Post ''The Jakarta Post'' is a daily English-language newspaper in Indonesia. The paper is owned by PT Bina Media Tenggara and based in the nation's capital, Jakarta. ''The Jakarta Post'' started as a collaboration between four Indonesian media ...

'', ', and ''

Tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian for 'time'; plural 'tempos', or from the Italian plural), measured in beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given musical composition, composition, and is often also an indication of the composition ...

'' use "district" to refer to '; however machine translation services like

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

often incorrectly uses "district" to refer to regencies instead.

Definition

District in Indonesia is the third-level

, below regency or city (second-level) and

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

(first-level). According to the Act Number 23 of 2014, district is formed by the government of regency or city in order to improve the coordination of governance, public services, and empowerment of urban/rural villages. District head is a career bureaucrat position directly appointed by regent or mayor. The local district term ' is used in the majority of Indonesian areas, with ' being the head. During the

and early republic period, the term ''district'' referred to ''kewedanan'', a subdivision of a regency. ''Kewedanan'' itself was divided into ', which was translated as ''subdistrict'' (). Following the abolition of ''kewedanan'', the term ''district'' began to be associated with ' which has since been directly administered by regency. In

English-language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

dictionary, ''

subdistrict A subdistrict or sub-district is an administrative division that is generally smaller than a district. Equivalents * Administrative posts of East Timor, formerly Portuguese-language * Kelurahan, in Indonesia * Mukim, a township in Brunei, Ind ...

'' means "a division or subdivision of a

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

", hence the translation of ' as ''subdistrict'' is no longer precise since the absence of ''kewedanan'' as ''district''. The 1982 publication of

translated ' as ''district''. With the release of the Act Number 21 of 2001 on the Special Autonomous of Papua Province, the term ' was used instead of ' in the entire

Western New Guinea Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, and Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly Dutch and granted to Indonesia in 1962. Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region ...

. The difference between the two is merely the naming, with ''kepala distrik'' being the district head. It was later followed in 2019 by another autonomous province, the

, where ' was replaced with ''kapanewon'' and '.

Sultan Hamengkubuwono X Sri Sultan Hamengkubawono X ( Hanacaraka: , also spelled as Hamengkubawana X, often abbreviated as HB X; born Bendara Raden Mas Herjuno Darpito, 2 April 1946) is the Sultan of the historic Yogyakarta Sultanate in Indonesia and is currently al ...

, the region's governor and the monarch of

Yogyakarta Sultanate The Sultanate of Yogyakarta, officially the Sultanate of Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat ( ; ), is a Javanese monarchy in Yogyakarta Special Region, in the Republic of Indonesia. The current head of the sultanate is Hamengkubuwono X. Yogyakart ...

, issued Gubernatorial Decree Number 25 of 2019, which restored the old naming convention for the region's subdivisions. ''Kapanewon ''(a subdivision of regency) is headed by a ''panewu'', while ' (a subdivision of city), is headed by a ''mantri pamong praja''.

List of districts

References

External links

* {{Districts of Indonesia Districts, Indonesia