This is absolutely packed with lies.
First of all, it was NOT the International Court of Justice (ICJ) but the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) that made the July 2016 ruling (
). This is a very important distinction because rulings by the PCA - unlike rulings by the ICJ - do NOT carry the weight of international law. Furthermore, in this case, China declined to participate in the arbitration.
Secondly the PCA ruling in question absolutely does NOT confirm the Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal as "sovereign Filipino territory". For the simple reason that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which is the international law framework the PCA was asked to arbitrate under, “does not address the sovereignty of states over land territory”. In fact the PCA, in its ruling, specifically said that it had “not been asked to, and does not purport to, make any ruling as to which state enjoys sovereignty over any land territory in the South China Sea, in particular with respect to the disputes concerning sovereignty over the Spratly Islands [where the Second Thomas Shoal is] or Scarborough Shoal”!
This is all the more ironic because the US is one of the rare countries out there that refused to sign or ratify UNCLOS, contrary to China...
What the ruling DID say with regards to the Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal is as follows:
- For the Scarborough Shoal, it ruled that they are rocks that cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own, do not generate an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or continental shelf entitlements beyond their 12-nautical-mile territorial sea. It also ruled that both Chinese and Filipino fishermen, among others, had traditional fishing rights in the area and that no party should prevent the other from exercising these rights.
- For the Second Thomas Shoal, the ruling declared that it is a "low-tide elevation", that "does not generate entitlements to a territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, or continental shelf" but that it is "within the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of the Philippines", with the consequence that the Philippines have rights over the resources in these areas.
That's it, it's a ruling about maritime entitlements under UNCLOS, not about the sovereignty over these territories.
Thirdly, Burns’ statement that “all the rest of the world understands that and recognises that this is sovereign Philippine territory” is even more egregious.
This is patently untrue, even for US allies. For instance Britain, France and Germany in their 2020 "note verbale" to the UN on the matter (
), specifically wrote that they “take no position” over the “disputed territorial sovereignty to naturally formed land features and to areas of the continental shelf in the South China Sea”.
In fact, until this declaration by Burns, this would have been untrue for the US themselves! Their position so far had been that - just like Britain, France and Germany - they did not take a position on the sovereignty claims themselves. The main reason is because these claims do not only involve the PRC and the Philippines but also the ROC (Taiwan), who also claim both the Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal, as well as Vietnam and Malaysia who have also made claims over other parts of the Spratly Islands archipelago (of which the Second Thomas Shoal is part of). As such, unilaterally siding with one of the claimants over the others is a rather bizarre position for Washington.
Lastly, if the US wanted to be constructive here, instead of backing one state or the other in its maximalist claims in order to fuel conflict, it should encourage the negotiation of the Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea that's currently being discussed between ASEAN countries and China.
