The  Senate and the House bicameral conference committee’s  approval of the proposed Maritime Zones Act on  Wednesday, July 17, “brings us  closer to establishing a law that strengthens our legal rights in the West Philippine Sea”,  Rep. Francisco “Kiko”  Benitez (Neg. Occ., 3^rd District) said. 

Benitez  is the author of House Bill 7819 or the Maritime Zones Bill and a member of the  Bicameral Conference Committee on Maritime Zones Bill. 

Benitez said he looks forward to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s signing the Maritime Zones bill into law, which he committed to during his keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialog in Singapore in May.

“This marks a crucial step forward in asserting our sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea,” he said. 

“The  act will integrate international law into our national framework, delineating our maritime domains such as internal waters and archipelagic waters, our territorial seas, contiguous zones, our exclusive economic zone, and our (extended) continental shelf,” he said. 

 “The Maritime Zones Law is long overdue. We urgently need a law delineating our maritime domains to assert the extent of our sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction, in accordance with UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea),” Benitez said. 

The joint meeting of the bill’s authors and champions from the House and Senate on Wednesday “clarified the extent of our internal waters and archipelagic waters, aligning its definitions with our Constitution and UNCLOS, to protect our internal waters from unlawful entry of foreign vessels,” he said.

The passage of the Maritime Zones Law “ will strengthen our assertion of maritime entitlements over the West Philippine Sea, which is part of our Exclusive Economic Zone, and Philippine Rise, which is part of our extended continental shelf, and such other maritime areas covered by future submissions to the United Nations on the limits of our continental shelf, including our claim for the region of West Palawan as part of our extended continental shelf which has been submitted to the UN just this June,” Benitez added.

The law  would also provide the foundation for two important maritime governance bills passed by the House and pending in the Senate: the designation of archipelagic sea lanes, and the Blue Economy Bill which mandates maritime spatial planning, he said.*