Although the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) established the fundamental legal framework governing maritime rights and jurisdiction, the absence of judicial interpretation on key issues such as historical rights, the legal status of maritime features, and the basis for generating maritime entitlements allowed competing legal narratives to persist and evolve in different directions.
One of the most important legacies of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Award was not the final settlement of maritime disputes in the region. Rather, it fundamentally clarified the interpretation of maritime entitlements under UNCLOS. In other words, the award has altered the manner in which states formulate and justify their maritime claims under UNCLOS. Thus, the overlapping and complex maritime claims in the South China Sea have begun to be slowly reframed in a more transparent and clearer legal framework.
Reinterpreting Maritime Entitlements in the South China Sea
In the South China Sea before 2016, the disputes were not only about competing sovereignty claims and overlapping maritime zones but also about different interpretations of the legal basis for establishing and justifying maritime entitlements.
