Carpio warns: UNCLOS will ‘collapse’ if China’s aggression in South China Sea continues

Former Supreme Court (SC) Justice Antonio Carpio on Wednesday (April 14) warned that United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) will “collapse” if China is allowed to push its sweeping claim over the South China Sea.

“The nations of the world must unite to strongly push back China, otherwise if China succeeds in taking the South China Sea, or in making the South China Sea its own national lake, denying the application of UNCLOS in the South China Sea, then UNCLOS will collapse for other naval powers will also seize their new seas as their own possessions,” he said during a forum hosted by the Stratbase Albert del Rosario Institute (ADRi).

“That will mean that the demise of UNCLOS and the end of a rules-based maritime order, that will mean the beginning of a maritime order created and enforced by naval guns and the entrenchment of the ‘might is right’ concept,” he added.

Carpio also pointed out this will also lead to “a naval arms race among coastal states and the diversion of funds from social service to naval defense” as well as “perpetual tension and even chaos in the oceans and seas of the world.”

The retired magistrate reminded that the nations agreed to put in place the UNCLOS as “a body of rules” that is “required for the use of our oceans and seas, as well as, for the exploitation and conservation of the resources in our oceans and seas.”

“Such body of rules must be complied with by all nations of the world, otherwise without such body of rules or without compliance with such rules, nations will go to war defend their right to use the oceans and seas and to exploit the resources of the oceans and seas,” he pointed out.

However, Carpio lamented that “the People’s Republic of China has sought to overturn this ‘right is might’ concept upside down by claiming almost entire South China Sea in glaring violation of UNCLOS.”

“China is enforcing its claim outside the compulsory dispute settlement mechanism of UNCLOS, by authorizing its Coast Guard to fire on foreign vessels fishing in the high seas or in their own Exclusive Economic Zones, hundreds of nautical miles from China’s own Exclusive Economic Zone,” he said.

“China has adopted the concept of ‘might is right’ in the South China Sea, in violation not only of UNCLOS, but also the UN charter,” he added.

Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)