21 March 2014 – The global international political group Centrist Democrat International (CDI) unanimously adopted an emergency resolution on the South China Sea maritime disputes during a meeting of its Executive Council on March 19 in Brussels, Belgium.

The resolution was proposed by former Senator Edgardo J. Angara, who is a member of CDI’s Executive Council and Vice President for Asia Pacific.

It says in the resolution that the CDI “recalls [that] history’s destructive wars began when democratic nations stood silent in the face of unlawful occupations of other nation’s territory, and remembers these lessons to condemn territorial encroachments wherever they occur.”

The group “calls on China to respect its treaty obligations under the UN Charter, Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) and generally accepted principles on international law.”

Likewise, the CDI “strongly urges China to pursue peaceful, lawful, and internationally sanctioned rules on dispute resolution to remove rising tensions in the region and seek peaceful rules-based solutions of the conflicting claims.”

The CDI is a grouping of political parties, organizations and associations “whose thoughts and actions are guided by the principles of Christian or integral humanism; that is, a humanism that is open to transcendence and committed to brotherhood.” Its members are drawn from 60 democratic countries all over the world, including major nations in Europe such as Germany, France and Spain, and Mexico and Brazil in Latin America. END