By Lan Nguyen
Legal questions regarding China’s non-participation in the Philippines v. China arbitration.
The Philippines v. China case before the arbitral tribunal set up under Annex VII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has attracted worldwide attention for a number of reasons, one of which being China’s refusal to participate in the proceedings, which were initiated by the Philippines.
The non-appearance of a party before an international court or tribunal is not uncommon, nor is this the first time a party has chosen not to appear before an UNCLOS dispute settlement body. In 2013, Russia elected to stay away from both provisional measures proceeding before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and currently, as things stand, it is not appearing before the Annex VII arbitral tribunal in the Arctic Sunrise case initiated by the Netherlands. What is peculiar aboutPhilippines v. China, however, is that even though China has officially made it public that it would not participate in the proceedings, it has missed no opportunity to make the details of its position known through both formal and informal channels. This situation gives rise to several interesting legal questions.
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