Sovereignty and sovereign rights

IT is completely false to claim that the arbitral ruling issued by the arbitral tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague affirmed our sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea. But it is also completely misleading to say that the ruling has nothing to do with our sovereignty. Commentators and analysts, particularly those who have openly declared their biases, should stop taking advantage of the unfamiliarity of most Filipinos with the technical jargon of international relations that only political scientists and scholars can reasonably be familiar with.

To put it simply, the arbitral ruling did not award to the Philippines any part in the West Philippine Sea to become part of our national territory. That is not the issue in the resolution. On the other hand, the ruling clearly divested China of any territorial claims, when the court struck down as without historical and legal basis its dubious nine-dash line that practically annexed most of the area as part of its national territory. The tribunal, in its ruling, upheld the parameters set in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), which consequently preserved the rights of the Philippines, as a sovereign country, over its exclusive economic zones (EEZs), which are being claimed by China as theirs not only as EEZ, but even as part of its national territory. Any student of international relations familiar with Unclos would know that EEZs are not part of a country's national territory, but to which it is given exclusive economic rights.