Philippine Intervention
delivered by
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr.
during the
28th ASEAN Regional Forum
06 August 2021, ASEAN Conference Room
AGENDA ITEM 3: EXCHANGE OF VIEWS ON REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ISSUES
AGENDA ITEM 4: FUTURE DIRECTION OF THE ARF
Excellencies,
I am pleased to see you all as we close this weeklong marathon of ASEAN meetings with the ASEAN Regional Forum.
That we’re still meeting virtually just shows the enduring fact that COVID is here to stay. We’ll just have to live with it.
Our priorities remain the same: vaccination. Our brother Singapore has made that clear in his characteristic fashion: to the point. Even with regard to the movement of vaccinated people across borders. There should be no discrimination based on what vaccine one got. Otherwise, it is discrimination against developing countries who got what was first on offer and what they could afford. That would make of vaccines the conduct of diplomacy by warlike means.
Amidst the pandemic, our work in ARF continues. Terrorism remains a priority. Terrorists are a privileged breed; they have not allowed the pandemic to stop them; they have even used it to their ends. They don’t even bother to pretend that terrorism is the strategy of last resort of the weak and poor against the strong and rich. Terrorists have huge financial resources; either rich countries sponsor and/or trade in drugs, weapons and sex slavery. There is no solution for it but to stamp it out as I told the Global Coalition.
We co-chaired the 2nd ARF Workshop on Aviation Security and Information Sharing, focusing on countering terrorist travel and privacy and data protection. Terrorists are going online to recruit and radicalize; cooperation in cyber-security must be wider and tighter among us all.
Maritime security is an important area of cooperation of the Ha Noi Plan of Action II. We uphold the 1982 UNCLOS as the legal framework under which all ocean activities are regulated. To this end we welcomed the opportunity to present the character and obligations of cooperation in semi-enclosed seas under UNCLOS in an ARF Workshop.
We have repeated our position on the South China Sea; suffice it to remind everyone concerned that ours is not just one view among others. It is the law and we have the law on our side.
We welcome the increasing affirmations of support and affirmation for the 2016 Arbitral Award. The Award must be seen for what it is: it singles out no one, and was so carefully crafted as to be unusable as a weapon for disputation; and most helpful in clarifying maritime issues.
As outgoing Country Coordinator for negotiations on the Code of Conduct, the Philippines takes modest pride in such progress in the pandemic as it achieved with the COC. We are pleased the Preamble is now agreed on even if provisionally; the job’s now Myanmar’s.
On Myanmar, we have likewise made our position clear: the democratic restoration of the status quo ante the coup which requires the release of the heart, soul and face of Myanmar, Aung Saan Suu Kyi. She is needed again to lead her people by inspiration. She is the lynchpin by birth, breeding and bravery of the wellbeing of the people of the country her father founded and the cooperation of the military he created; not her incarceration by them. Dialogue is constructive only if it includes all concerned.
Our call for peaceful dialogue among all concerned parties extends to the Korean Peninsula. We stand ready to play a constructive role in advancing a peaceful and denuclearized Korean Peninsula bilaterally through confidence-building measures and regionally through ASEAN-led mechanisms. There can be no military solution to a conflict between brothers. And they are too close for comfort for ASEAN to ignore.
Excellencies, survival and recovery from the pandemic depend as much on American economic recovery as China’s. Both can go each their own way, but it won’t be as fast and sure as if they did it in sync. But ASEAN doesn’t have the luxury of choice. We need both of you. We’re not sure you need us. It is in the spaces for cooperation between the Great Powers — in the commons essential to human flourishing that we want to situate ASEAN. We do not aim to take from both opportunistically; but to work with both for the greater benefit of the region and our impossible to disconnect interrelated world. Thank you.