House bill seeks to identify maritime features in West Philippine Sea

MANILA, Philippines — Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez is pushing for a law that would identify all the maritime features of the West Philippine Sea that the country is claiming to be within its sovereignty and jurisdiction.

In filing House Bill 8934, Rodriguez underscored the importance of identifying the features “specifically by law and by baselines of their territorial seas (TS) and contiguous zone (CZ) pursuant to the rules of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

The CZ covers that part of the sea extending for 12 nautical miles from the limits of the TS, or 24 nautical miles from the baseline. Within this zone, a state may exercise protective jurisdiction like customs enforcement as well as fiscal, immigration and sanitary rules.

“Without clearly established baselines, we cannot ensure full enjoyment of sovereign rights in the waters within our maritime domains. The rule is that the CZ is automatically made part of the EEZ when the latter zone is claimed and established by a coastal state,” the measure reads.

Rodriguez noted in HB 8934 that seven years have “come and gone since the landmark Arbitral Award” and “yet the country remained unable to translate (these) gains into an unimpregnable national reality.”

He added that the proposed law seeks to “implement in concrete ways the Philippine triumph over China in the South China Sea arbitral proceedings.”

“Since there are features in the Kalayaan Island Group claimed by the Philippines that are outside the Philippine EEZ, it is essential that the TS and CZ of these features lying outside the Philippine EEZ are immediately and already drawn using the appropriate basepoints,” the bill also read in part.

HB 8934 listed 54 Philippine maritime features, along with their respective coordinates, and stressed that the “Philippines must press its sovereign claims over them by identifying them as Philippine-claimed or occupied features and drawing the appropriate baselines for the territorial seas around them.”