By Felipe F. Salvosa II
PressOne.PH
Saying the Philippines should “give up” the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG), the portion of the Spratly Islands that the country claims, just because it lies supposedly beyond the Philippine EEZ is not just wrong (not to mention, absurd)—it fundamentally disregards how international law, domestic law, and even strategy actually work.
Why the argument fails: EEZs don’t dictate national territory at all. The exclusive economic zone governs maritime resource rights, not ownership of land.
- Treating EEZ limits—a 200-nautical mile distance from a country’s territorial sea—as a test of ownership or even sovereignty is absurd.
- Depending on which map is used, the KIG is not entirely outside of the EEZ off the coast of Palawan. A huge portion of the KIG does overlap with the Philippine EEZ.
- The bottom line is, the KIG being outside the Philippine EEZ does not mean it is outside the Philippines or that the country cannot claim it anymore as territory. It doesn’t work that way.
Consistent with Unclos: The Philippine position since the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration has been remarkably consistent.
- The Philippines anchors its EEZ on its archipelagic baselines, in compliance with United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
- The 2016 arbitral ruling clarified that Spratly features—including those in the KIG—do not generate EEZs at all.
- After the ruling, the Philippines updated its baseline laws and treated the KIG as a “regime of islands.”
- None of these moves contradict each other. If the wrong logic is followed, many territorial jurisdictions based on regimes of islands would collapse. To name a few: France and French Polynesia, Ecuador and the Galapagos, UK and the Falklands.
What the 2016 arbitral ruling is all about: What did the arbitration at The Hague really do? First of all, it did not rule on sovereignty.
- It ruled on maritime resource claims. It did not decide who owns the Spratlys. Territorial ownership was explicitly outside the tribunal’s mandate.
- It did not grant the KIG its own EEZ, and that issue is already settled. Even a claim, for the sake of argument, that since the KIG has no EEZ because it is a separate group of islands, and therefore it should be abandoned, is not supported by the ruling at all.
Territory vs. maritime entitlements are separate questions.
- Territorial claims operate in terms of constitutional law and domestic acts, and in the context of unresolved international disputes, such as who owns the Spratlys.
- Maritime entitlements are under Unclos, an international convention. A country can conceivably claim islands as territory even if those islands are not part of its EEZ or generate no EEZ.
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Domestic reality check: Even with an ongoing international dispute, one thing is clear: the Philippine claim to the KIG is settled under domestic law.
- The Philippine claim rests on the 1978 Presidential Decree No. 1596 and the 1987 Constitution, which states that the national territory covers “territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction.”
- The KIG is in fact organized as the Municipality of Kalayaan, with local government officials and basic public administration and services, and more importantly, residents. Real people.
The implicit danger: Here’s the part that should ruffle feathers.
- Unlike Manila, whose adherence to Unclos and the arbitral ruling reflects a commitment to rules-based international order, Beijing rejects the 2016 arbitration and disregards Unclos (which it actually signed) when it suits its interests.
- Arguments that blur the line between territory and EEZ weaken the very legal framework the Philippines relies on.
- Remember, China rejects the 2016 arbitral ruling because it invalidated the nine-dash-line claim, which Beijing uses as a basis to claim almost the entire South China Sea.
Muddling the issue doesn’t help Manila. It helps Beijing. And “giving up” Kalayaan because it doesn’t sit neatly inside an EEZ would gain the Philippines nothing—and concede something it never had to give up.
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