On March 10, 2009, the Philippines, under then-president Gloria Arroyo, signed into law its Archipelagic Baseline Act. This represented the first time the Philippines officially admitted to observing a archipelagic sovereignty doctrine. Prior to this, Manila was ambiguous about whether it had adopted such a doctrine and reluctant to publicly clarify its position on the matter. The reason for this reluctance was that if it did officially observe the doctrine it would have to respect Taiwan’s rights to traditional fishing grounds within its territorial waters and openly grant foreign shipping passage through its navigation channels and sub-channels.
Since the announcement of its Baseline Act in 1961, the Philippines has prohibited Taiwanese fishing vessels from entering its archipelagic waters. It has also declined to announce the navigation channels or sub-channels within these waters. In 1984, when Manila signed the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, it insisted on retaining the treaty limits of the Treaty of Paris signed by the US and Spain in 1898, and the scope of the territorial waters defined therein, prohibiting passage for foreign vessels and excluding foreign ships from fishing within these waters.
The Treaty of Paris specified the longitude and latitude of the parts of the archipelago that Spain was to cede to the US. The idea is, as it was at the time, that these coordinates included the archipelago itself, but not the territorial waters around it. The Philippines, contrary to prevailing international law and convention, chose to include them and this is why it has insisted on saying that foreign vessels are not permitted in these waters, which it maintained were within the scope of the treaty limits.
With the signing of the 1982 UN convention, with its stipulations on archipelagic sovereign rights, the Philippines could once more exercise rights over the surrounding territorial waters and enjoy all the benefits that this entailed. In fact, even though the UN convention did give countries sovereign rights to the archipelagic waters around them, the Philippines chose to extend their interpretation to include the waters within the treaty limits of the Treaty of Paris as well, which went beyond the scope stipulated in the UN convention.
Clearly, then, the Philippines has not been complying with the UN convention. Taiwan is a neighbor and the territorial waters of the two countries meet. The Philippines’ territorial claims directly affect Taiwan’s maritime rights. Despite this, Taipei has paid scant attention to the Philippines’ maritime territorial claims and in 1991 even signed a bilateral agreement with Manila on sea routes.
This agreement, in which the Philippines designated two routes along which Taiwanese vessels could cross its waters, essentially recognized the Philippines’ illegitimate territorial claims. Thankfully, the Philippines has since rescinded the agreement, slating it for review and then unilaterally scrapping it.
The Philippine Congress is currently discussing drafting new legislation concerning the Archipelagic Baseline Act that would define routes through which foreign shipping and flight routes could cross its territorial waters, stipulating their rights and responsibilities and the various security measures involved. The Congress is also looking at a draft law on defining the maritime zones of the Republic of the Philippines.
Of these, it is really the latter that concerns Taiwan, because defining these zones will involve Taiwan’s traditional fishing rights within the Philippines archipelagic waters.
Prior to 1961, Taiwanese fishermen would ply their trade in the waters off the Batan Islands and the Babuyan Islands to the north of the Philippines, as they have historically done. Then, in 1961, the Philippines introduced legislation forcing Taiwanese fishermen out of these waters, in complete disregard of their traditional fishing rights.
According to Article 51 of the UN convention, an archipelagic state “shall recognize traditional fishing rights and other legitimate activities of the immediately adjacent neighboring States in certain areas falling within archipelagic waters. The terms and conditions for the exercise of such rights and activities, including the nature, the extent and the areas to which they apply, shall, at the request of any of the States concerned, be regulated by bilateral agreements between them.”
Taipei should approach the authorities of the Philippines regarding the traditional fishing rights of Taiwanese fishermen.
In recent years, Taipei, under both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party, has emphasized the importance of the ocean to Taiwanese. However, during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, the government has turned a blind eye to the Philippines’ Archipelagic Baseline Act.
The Ma administration’s failure to address this issue is a glaring oversight. I hope that the institutions concerned will take the appropriate measures to rectify this oversight as soon as possible, in the interests of Taiwanese fishermen’s traditional fishing rights in the waters between Taiwan and the Philippines.
Chen Hurng-yu is a professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of Asian Studies.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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