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. The joint meeting of the bill’s authors and champions from the House and Senate today also 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.

The passage of this law will strengthen our assertion of maritime entitlements over 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. This also provides 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.

We look forward to the signing of the President of this Maritime Zones bill, which he committed to during his keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last May.