Camarines Sur Representative Luis Raymund Villafuerte on Wednesday filed a bill establishing the country’s archipelagic sea lanes as espoused in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other relevant international conventions.
Villafuerte said House Bill (HB) 1095 or the proposed “Philippine Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act,” seeks to enable the government to designate sea lanes where foreign merchant ships and warships and aircraft can pass in accordance with UNCLOS provisions.
Villafuerte issued this statement as the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) reported on its social media page last week the “continuing unauthorized presence” of “a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA) Navy vessel, China Coast Guard (CCG) vessel 5203 and 42 suspected Chinese Maritime Militia (CMM) vessels anchored in the vicinity of Pag-asa Island.
According to the PCG, these Chinese vessels were about 4.5 to 8 nautical miles (NM) off Pag-Asa, or “clearly inside the land feature’s 12 NM territorial sea” as set in the 1982 UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral Award in favor of the Philippines by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, Netherlands.
“Their continuing unauthorized presence is clearly inconsistent with the right of innocent passage and a blatant violation of the Philippines’ territorial integrity,” the PCG said on its FB (Facebook) page of the Chinese incursions into the vicinity of Pag-asa Island, which is the largest island in the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) in Palawan.
“Under UNCLOS, an archipelagic State has sovereignty over its archipelagic waters and the airspace above it, as well as its seabed and subsoil. The archipelagic State may designate sea lanes and air routes suitable for the continuous and expeditious passage of ships and aircraft through or over its archipelagic waters and the adjacent territorial sea,” said Villafuerte.
Villafuerte authored HB 1095 with Camarines Sur Reps: Miguel Luis Villafuerte and Tsuyoshi Anthony Horibata plus the Bicol Saro partylist.
These authors stressed in their bill that in pursuit of its duty to protect its maritime domain, the state shall:
“Implement and adhere to the provisions of the 1982 UNCLOS and relevant international conventions” to which the Philippines is a party; and
· “Minimize the routes and areas that shall be utilized and accessed by foreign vessels and foreign registered aircraft for the exercise of archipelagic sea lanes passage.”
They pointed out that while Republic Act (RA) 9255 effectively delineated the archipelagic baselines of the Philippines, this law “failed to provide and establish the archipelagic sea lanes of the Philippines,” as espoused in Article 53 of UNCLOS.
“With its waters linked to important and busy navigational routes, it is imperative that the Philippines designate its archipelagic sea lanes in consideration of its own security, economic and environmental interests,” Villafuerte said.