Leading international law experts said any verdict by the Arbitral Tribunal on the South China Sea will be of no legal validity, at a seminar on the South China Sea Arbitration and International Rule of Law in the Hague on Sunday. (Photo by Fu Jing/chinadaily.com.cn)
Any verdict by the Arbitral Tribunal on the South China Sea will be of no legal validity, simply because the related parties have not all entered into an agreement to authorize the Hague-based arbitration body as a go between in the dispute, a host of veteran law experts said on Sunday.
The experts, some of whom were even drafting the United Nations' international convention on the sea, discussed the issue at a seminar on the South China Sea Arbitration and International Rule of Law in the Dutch city, where the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA)'s Arbitral Tribunal is assessing the dispute case filed unilaterally by the Philippines.
The experts spoke to China Daily at the sidelines of the one-day seminar, organized by Leiden University's Grotius Center for International Legal Studies and Wuhan University's Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies from Central China. They said the PCA had no jurisdiction of sovereignty dispute under the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
They also said the related parties had not entered into an agreement to allow the tribunal to conduct such arbitration.
According to them, these are two essential preconditions for the PCA to exercise the arbitration.
"So China has held the right stances of non-participation and non-acceptance in the dispute arbitration, which has been stirred up mainly due to the geopolitical strategy of other power in the region," said Abdul Koroma, former judge of the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, based in the Hague.
Koroma said the PCA didn't obtain an agreement from the related parties to conduct the arbitration, which is a precondition required under United Nations law.
"On this case, the Arbitral Tribunal has no such authority simply because not all of the related parties have agreed to authorize to evoke the arbitration," said Koroma, who was previously the Sierra Lenone ambassador to the United Nations and European Union.
"Only the Philippines has filed the case of arbitration and it is one-sided," he added. "So there lacks in authority, in accordance to the international law."
The South China Sea has been owned by China since ancient times and now the Philippines and Vietnam have occupied some islands and reefs in the region. China has repeatedly insisted that the related parties should solve the dispute through negotiation, but the Philippines initiated the South China Sea arbitration against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in early 2013.
"It is right for China not to accept arbitration and any verdict of the PCA," Koroma said. "This is very clear."
Koroma said he was echoing on calls from other experts attending the seminar, insisting the international law should not be used for some countries to achieve their objectives of foreign policies.
