14 June 2011 | CIL Seminar Series(Attendance was by invitation only)
The South China Sea Disputes: Prospects for Adjudication or Arbitration
Introduction
In recent weeks, tensions between China and Vietnam as well as China and Philippines over oil exploration activities in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea have flared, highlighting the intractable nature of the South China Sea disputes.
It has been a long-held assumption that the disputes relating the Spratly Islands will not be resolved by an international court or arbitral tribunal. To this end, this Seminar examined the evolving dispute between China and the Southeast Asian Claimants (particularly Vietnam and Philippines) and discussed whether any of the legal issues arising from this evolving dispute can be unilaterally referred to arbitration or adjudication under the compulsory binding dispute settlement procedures in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
First, the relevant provisions of UNCLOS were explained, particularly how States can claim various maritime zones under UNCLOS such as the territorial sea, exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf. The importance of the classification of geographic features as islands, rocks, low-tide elevations, reefs or artificial islands were also explained.
Second, the Seminar explained the evolving issues between China and the Southeast Asian claimants over which areas in the South China Sea are in dispute and which areas are not in dispute. This included an explanation of how the submissions made to the Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf in 2009 have clarified the claims of the Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea. It also included an explanation of the significance of China’s nine-dashed line.
Third, the system of compulsory binding dispute settlement in section 2 of Part XV of UNCLOS were explained.
Finally, the question of the applicability of the compulsory binding dispute settlement system in UNCLOS to the current disputes over activities in the South China Sea considered.
About the Speaker
Robert C Beckman is the Director of Centre for International Law (CIL), a university-wide research centre at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also an Associate Professor at the NUS Faculty of Law, where he has taught for more than 30 years. He lectures at the Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law & Policy. He is an expert on the issues of law of the sea in Southeast Asia, including piracy and maritime security. He served for several years as a regional resource person in the workshops on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South China Sea. He has also represented Singapore in various CSCAP meeting on maritime security, and has worked on legal issues relating to the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. He is an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Maritime Security Programme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
