Manila: Ten years ago, an Arbitral Tribunal affirmed the Philippines' sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf in the West Philippine Sea; and invalidated China's nine-dash line in the South China Sea.
According to Philippines News Agency, legal luminaries and experts have hailed the ruling-handed down on July 12, 2016-as a Philippine legal victory that upheld the rule of law in the vital sea lane. But at the grassroots level, what does this 501-page decision mean for a regular Filipino?
In the words of Solicitor-General Darlene Marie Berberabe, 'It means the fish that feed our coastal towns are in law, Filipino fish. It means the gas beneath Recto Bank is in law, Filipino gas.' 'And that Bajo de Masinloc, in law, remains a traditional fishing ground from which our fishermen may not lawfully depart," she added.
As the country commemorates the 10th anniversary of the landmark ruling on July 12, experts said Filipinos must collectively assert the rights they secured under it and understand that whatever happens in the West Philippine Sea affects everyone across the country. At a Department of Foreign Affairs-organized (DFA) conference in Pasay City on Friday, University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute Director Michael Atrigenio explained that a drop in fish output alone could mean higher prices of fish for the population.
'Even if they live in a very far place from the West Philippine Sea, they are also affected by what happens in the West Philippine Sea,' he said. 'These things have to be explained-not just the legal aspect of the award, but also the benefits that we get because we won in the arbitral."
The Philippines' journey to The Hague and its eventual 2016 arbitral ruling was prompted when China formally transmitted its so-called nine-dash line claim to the United Nations in 2009. This demarcation covered nearly all of the 200-nautical-mile EEZ of the Philippines and other coastal states in the South China Sea. Later in April 2012, a standoff between Philippine and Chinese vessels took place in the Scarborough Shoal, an area just 124 nautical miles off mainland Zambales that has always been Philippine territory, where Filipino fisherfolks and the generations before them regularly fished. The standoff lasted four months and when it ended, Filipino fishermen were already blocked from entering the feature's lagoon.
Berberabe said pressure at that time was not only at sea. In the same year, Philippine banana shipments met sudden barriers, tour groups were cancelled, and filing an arbitration case was not the obvious choice. 'But we needed clarity on rights over the waters surrounding the archipelago, particularly those in the South China Sea. No less than the livelihood of our fishing communities was at stake. The case was borne by the most basic needs of our people,' she said.
When it finally handed the award in 2016, the Arbitral Tribunal ultimately ruled that the nine-dash line generates no entitlement to resources and that no feature China claims through it can generate an EEZ of its own, Berberabe said. Had Beijing's claims stood, she said its sprawling claims would have swallowed most of the Philippines' EEZ.
'What the award supplied was certainty: it confirmed that within our exclusive economic zone, the Philippines holds sovereign rights, not sovereignty over the waters, but the exclusive right-ours and no one else's-to explore, exploit, conserve, and manage the resources of the sea, the seabed, and its subsoil,' she said. Before the ruling, Department of Justice senior state counsel Fretti Ganchoon said there was a real question if there was indeed a valid overlap in the maritime zones in the West Philippine Sea.
'Because of this award, it's clear that all of the riches there, the marine wealth there, including oil and gas in the continental shelf-all of these belong to us,' she said. 'And it's the maritime riches that we need to protect because it's not just for us present generation here, but for all future generations. There's a connect to food security, energy security, etc.-It's not just a term or a concept."
Berberabe pointed out that beyond Filipino livelihood and source of food in the years to come, the award also kept the wider South China Sea as what the law says it was-"a sea governed by rules.' 'That certainty is a security good in the strictest sense. Instability at sea is priced into every insurance premium, every re-routed voyage, every delayed cargo. Law remains the least expensive security architecture ever devised, and the award is a load-bearing law,' she said.
Ten years on, Berberabe said, the ruling has continued to 'quietly keep alive' the country's national security, as well as stability, freedom of navigation, and flow of commerce in the region. 'Administrations change. Emphases shift. Budgets rise and fall. The Republic, however, is a continuing client, and this decade's work has moved the award's protection beyond the reach of any single season of politics,' she said.
'The award lives now in the Constitution's standing command, in two statutes of the land, in standing institutions that meet whether or not the news is watching, in charts our children will study bearing our own names for our own features." For the past decade, the government has woven the award, thread by thread, into domestic laws.
Since 2022, the country has also taken bolder steps in promoting the award by recording and publishing the harassments experienced by Filipinos in the West Philippine Sea. And in 2024, the Marcos administration further centralized its response to challenges in the West Philippine Sea and reorganized the National Coast Watch Council into the National Maritime Council, of which the Solicitor General is a member.
'From that seat, I can tell you what enduring protection looks like on an ordinary day: It is the Coast Guard holding station in our waters with discipline under immense provocation, whether it be the use of water cannons, aggressive maneuvers, or confrontations at Ayungin Shoal and Bajo de Masinloc,' she shared. 'It is BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) standing beside our fisherfolk under the gaze of the Chinese maritime militia. It is NAMRIA (National Mapping and Resource Information Authority) drawing the charts. It is the Department of Foreign Affairs filing the protests, patiently, one by one. It is the Armed Forces sustaining a presence that gives the law not merely a witness but a team."
