President Duterte’s UNGA speech gets high marks
MY colleagues and I in the Philippine Ambassadors Foundation Inc. (PAFI) and the Philippine Council on Foreign Relations (PCFR) have given President Duterte’s recent speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) high marks. Most notaBLY, THE PRESIDENT RAISED FOR THE fiRST time in a UN forum the award in favor of the Philippines by an arbitration panel of the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (Unclos). The President stated, “The Award is now part of international law, beyond compromise and beyond the reach of passing governments to dilute, diminish or abandon. We firmly reject attempts to undermine it. We welcome the increasing number of states that have come in support of the award and what it stands for – the triumph of reason over rashness, of law over disorder, of amity over ambition. This — as it should be — is the majesty of the law.”
It has taken the President a long time to speak of the arbitral award at the UN at a UN forum but when he DID fiNALLY, IT SEEMED LIKE THE WAIT was well worth it. The President made his declaration at a most suitable occasion and critical moment. The General Assembly is in a landmark session observing the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. Because the world is in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UNGA session has been mostly virtual, simply adopting what the whole sensible world has adopted. No large in-person gatherings, please.
Cardinal principle
The President’s speech nevertheless captures with considerable acuity the precarious situation of mankind and the monumental challenges facing the world body. Even as the world body grapples with the terrible consequences of the CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, CONflICTS AND tensions have erupted and arisen in many parts of the world. While, due to the pandemic, more than a million people have been sick, hundreds of thousands have died, international and national economies have spiraled downwards, and millions have lost their incomes and livelihoods, certain powers have taken advantage of the world’s focus on the pandemic, to pursue and advance their expansionist and predatory agendas.
The President frames mention of the arbitral award within the cardinal principle of the UN Charter: the peaceful settlement of disputes. The Philippines’ staunch commitment to this principle is shown by the fact that the international instrument amplifying this principle and invoked by the President’s speech carries the name of its capital: the Manila Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes Between States. (In its concern about the subject matter, the Philippines offered to host the meeting that formulated the Declaration.) That commitment’s abiding nature is of course mandated by the Philippine Constitution renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, and the country’s maintaining — notwithstanding ever mounting arms expenditures among countries in the region — the “weakest” armed forces.
A local writer has criticized the speech for putting the country on the side of danger and making the Philippines a possible theater of war in the struggle between the United States and China for global hegemony. In our reading, what the speech does is to put the country squarely on the side of the UN Charter and international law. At the very least, it reminds the international community of why the UN was founded, to save humanity from the scourge of war through the peaceful settlement of disputes. The founding members meant the organization to be an instrument and venue for bringing the international community in concert and harmony. The United Nations today is “united” in name only. Competition between and among nations will be all right if it is a friendly one and redounds to the advancement of mankind. Indeed, the members of the UN must redouble their efforts to bring peace to humanity. The world fears more