25 July 2016 – During the final meeting of the Foreign Ministers of ASEAN to hammer out a Joint Communique of the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and Related Meetings (AMM), the ten-member regional bloc supported Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto R. Yasay, Jr.’s proposal to enshrine the “rule of law” as a fundamental principle of ASEAN.
During the meeting, Secretary Yasay articulated the Philippines’ position that disputes, particularly those relating to the South China Sea, can best be resolved among all the parties concerned, peacefully, through full respect for legal and diplomatic processes in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLCOS) and the U.N. Charter.
The principle of “full respect for legal and diplomatic processes” in this year’s Joint Communique appears now as an established norm in support of a rules-based approach to peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law.” END