On July 12, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration issued a ruling in a case brought by the Philippines against China regarding each country’s claims in the South China Sea. It found in favor of the Philippines.
The area of the South China Sea that is in dispute is home to important shipping routes, fishing grounds, and potential deposits of oil and gas. Several countries have competing claims in the area. Both the Philippines and China claim sovereignty over several reefs and surrounding waters in the sea, with the Philippines citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as the basis for its claim and China citing what it considers its historic rights to the area contained within the boundaries of its “nine-dash line,” which had been used on Chinese maps to delineate Chinese territory in the sea since the late 1940s. In 2013 the Philippines filed a case with the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The court’s unanimous ruling was in favor of the Philippines. Among its findings were that there was “no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources” and that China had “violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights” and had caused “severe harm to the coral reef environment and violated its obligation to preserve and protect fragile ecosystems and the habitat of depleted, threatened, or endangered species.”
Although the decision is legally binding, the court has no way to enforce it, and even before the ruling was issued, China said that it would not accept the findings of the court. It remains to be seen how China and other countries with a stake in the region will react to the recent developments.
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