Speech
of
HON. TEODORO L. LOCSIN JR.
Secretary of Foreign Affairs
At the Kick-off Ceremony of the 7th Biennial Conference of the Asian Society of International Law
and the Relaunching of the Philippine Yearbook of International Law
[Delivered at the Carlos P. Romulo Library, Department of Foreign Affairs in Pasay City on 18 March 2019]
His Excellency Archbishop Gabriele Caccia and their Excellencies dear Ambassadors and the members of the diplomatic corps,
Justices Marvic Leonen and Romeo Barza,
Colleagues in government and in DFA,
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you all for joining us at the start of the working week. I am confident that your early morning trip to the DFA will be made worth it with a copy of the Philippine Yearbook of International Law. Without a doubt, it is a collector’s copy. This edition is the first iteration since that memorable year of 1989 when the last one came out — and, in addition, we would’ve lost our democracy if I hadn’t called in US fighter jets to save the day. That decision – unilateral – must have had some international law implication, but it was lost on its targets who ran for cover. But even by that standard, this morning’s launch is momentous.
Certainly, the world and this country have changed so much and moved so far — not to say erratically — from the waking but coherent nightmare of the Cold War, when we all thought we’d wake up dead, to the short morning of a New World and the rapid dusk of our darker times. This has been reflected in international law, which has not lacked for milestones in the last 30 years.
Global diplomacy gave pragmatic direction to developments in law in concluding major multilateral treaties that have entered the lexicon of public discourse, including the 1994 World Trade Organization agreement, the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, and last year’s Global Compact on Migration. The challenges keep coming; diplomacy and law have a lot of work cut out for them as milestones crumble into political discredit and disuse. It makes no difference: we do not work for the ages but for our time, which is quite a handful already. Some of what is accomplished will stand if only as cornerstones for a new edifice of international order.
On a regional scale, the Philippines and ASEAN drafted their Charter; and our country concluded defense, economic and labor agreements, inter alia, even with non-traditional partners, including with many of the countries represented at our event this morning.
The Philippines acceded to the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes which established the Permanent Court of Arbitration. It joined The Hague Conference on Private International Law and its Apostille Convention — a move that will benefit millions of overseas Filipinos and others by streamlining the processes of cross-border document authentication. And lately I got us out of the International Criminal Court into which we entered over consistently strong American opposition because the ICC has a disarming effect on military alliances; to put it as politely as possible.
We got into the ICC to accommodate our beloved colleague Miriam Defensor-Santiago; who tragically never assumed her seat in it. When the ICC weaponized human rights to defend the drug trade, we got out pronto. Over the weekend US Secretary of State Pompeo, a good friend of mine, all but criminalized the International Criminal Court for literally living up to its name.
To be sure, articles on some of these important developments may have been published in law school journals — but not in a Philippine Yearbook of International Law. So I share your hope that it won’t take us another 30 years for the next yearbook to see print.
Major changes in the international scene are happening and a big one is in the offing: What I called in the UN the Bismarck Moment of the creation of a united Korea will combine, in the words of the Prussian king, an Army with a state and a vibrant democracy of breathtaking wealth and industrial power.
Law must follow or better yet precede such momentous events to impart a measure of rationality to them or at least coherence; and minimize unintended consequences.
As a lawyer and publisher myself, I’d say a periodical Yearbook will be viable if we encourage contributions; not only from academe but also from outside it.
Dear justices, ambassadors, law practitioners: please write something substantial in your area of expertise or professional engagement in international law; double-check your citations; and submit them to the Yearbook for consideration and copy editing. Everybody needs an editor; even an editor like me improved by editing. We all love what we write not wisely but too much, to borrow from Othello after he strangled Desdemona. Anyone who thinks she/he writes immortal prose whenever they put pen to paper — do us a favor: don’t send in anything.
Publication will give one the most intense pleasure possible while keeping one’s clothes on: the experience and completion of a concentrated mental exercise by capturing good sense if not brilliant thought; as they must be captured with words. If you can’t express it, it is probably nonsense. Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must keep silent, said Wittgenstein. I think.
Additionally, you will gain a measure of immortality through the printed word on some bookshelf somewhere. This is better than the nothing which awaits those who think actions are a substitute for well thought-out, well-written words. Everything decays except well thought out ideas; even if they later prove inadequate. No idea is ever completely wrong. Even a flat-earther is right from one point of view and it works if you’re just walking. Thomas Kuhn showed that.
Some of my colleagues in the Department know what I’m talking about. Assistant Secretary Ed Malaya of our Treaties and Legal Affairs certainly does. Not only has he written several books through years of analyzing and synthesizing the Department’s policies and experiences in international law; he has also helped launch the writing careers of some of our younger diplomats.
He has completed a Treatise on Treaties: which I had the gall to offer to copyedit. But I gave up. Making it clearer would only obscure it.
It is in this context, of the Department’s renewed activity in international law, that I mention the most important international law event that will take place in the Philippines this year: the biennial conference of the Asian Society of International Law from 22 to 24 August. The event will benefit from the expertise not only of leading international law practitioners and teachers across the region, but also of the Asian judges of the International Court of Justice and other international judicial and arbitral bodies.
In the past two years, Ed Malaya and our Office of Treaties and Legal Affairs have been preparing hard for this event with the Philippine Society of International Law and the University of the Philippines Law Center. Let me congratulate our OTLA team, the Philippine Society of International Law led by Professor Elizabeth Pangalangan — I think I just missed you in Vienna the day before yesterday — and, last but never least, the editor-in-chief of the Yearbook and former undersecretary in this Department: Dean Merlin Magallona — an old friend of Ed Angara and mine. I wish Ed was around to see me do this. His was the iron hand on my bad temper because his temper was worse. I want us all to take a moment to wish good health to a great legal practitioner and my boss Teddy Regala of ACCRA law firm. Let me also thank Professor Harry Roque for bringing to Manila the 7th Biennial Conference of the Asian Society of International Law, and wish him and his collaborators all the best.
Above all, I wish to thank Senator Loren Legarda for her invaluable contributions to the practice of Philippine diplomacy by providing for its practical and therefore imperative needs. Without her, we’d be conducting foreign affairs on street corners and in small cafes — and I am not joking. I pray she gets foreign affairs again in Congress.
Thank you, and I wish all of you a very good morning. END