Metro Manila, Philippines – Solicitor General Darlene Berberabe said the landmark 2016 arbitral victory in the South China Sea is firmly embedded in the country’s laws and institutions, ensuring it will endure beyond any administration.
Speaking at the 10th anniversary commemoration of the arbitral award in Pasay City on July 10, Berberabe said the ruling remains effective because successive governments have incorporated it into legislation and institutions rather than treating it as a one-time legal victory.
“The promulgation of a judgment is an event, but legal protection ought not to be a singular moment, but consistent practice,” Berberabe said.
She said the award “endures to this day not because it was rendered in The Hague, but because the Republic decided in our Constitution, in our laws, in our institutions, and outward in our dealings with the world, to live by it.”
The Office of the Solicitor General represented the government when it filed the arbitration case against China in January 2013. Three years later, the tribunal ruled that China’s sweeping “nine-dash line” claim had no legal basis under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and upheld a number of Philippine maritime entitlements.
Berberabe said the award’s legal protections are now beyond the reach of political transitions.
“Administrations change. Emphasis shifts. Budgets rise and fall,” she said. “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 enactment of the Philippine Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act in 2024, as well as Executive Order 111 directing the publication of official nautical charts reflecting Philippine maritime zones, as examples of how the arbitral ruling has been translated into domestic law.
“That is what enduring protection looks like in a republic of laws — an international award woven thread by thread into domestic legal obligation, paper into law, law into practice,” she said.
Berberabe also described the country’s defense of its maritime rights as a constitutional obligation, citing provisions requiring the state to protect the nation’s marine wealth.
Berberabe said the arbitral award also reinforces freedom of navigation, regional stability and global commerce by affirming that maritime rights must be governed by international law rather than unilateral claims.
“An award is paper until a Republic chooses to live by it,” she said. “For 10 years, through every test, the Filipino people have chosen to live by the award.”
