Raul Pangalangan, Eduardo Malaya, Sedfrey Candelaria and Antonio La Viña —PHOTOS FROM DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS FACEBOOK PAGE
Four Filipino international law experts will serve in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), a global mechanism for the settlement of inter-state disputes, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced on Thursday.
The International Bureau of the PCA confirmed the appointment of Raul Pangalangan, Sedfrey Candelaria, Antonio La Viña and Ambassador Eduardo Malaya as Members of the Court after their names were submitted by Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo, the DFA said.
Pangalangan, a professor of law at the University of the Philippines Diliman, served as judge at the International Criminal Court from 2015 to 2021. He was the publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer from 2012 to 2015.
Candelaria is a law professor at Ateneo de Manila University and heads the Research, Publications and Linkages Office of the Philippine Judicial Academy.
La Viña was a member of the PCA Specialized Panel of Arbitrators and Experts for Environmental Disputes from 2016 to 2022. He is the current associate director for climate policy and international relations of the Manila Observatory.
PH initiative
Malaya is the country’s current ambassador to The Hague, the Netherlands, and is the acting president of the PCA Administrative Council for the term 2023-2024.
As acting president, Malaya presided over the PCA Administrative Council meeting in December 2023, where he noted the first time the United Nations General Assembly voted in consensus to adopt a resolution that recognized the “important contributions of the PCA to the peaceful settlement of disputes.”
It was an initiative by the Philippine Embassy in The Hague and the Philippine Mission to the United Nations in New York.
Each of the Filipino appointees will be serving as adjudicators settling disputes by member states of the PCA for a term of six years.
Dispute resolution
The PCA is an intergovernmental organization that provides a platform to peacefully resolve international conflicts and disputes through arbitration.
It serves as a registry for complaints and forms a separate court comprising its appointed judges to settle the case.
The PCA was formed in 1899 but it wasn’t until 2010 that the Philippines became a signatory to the century-old institution.
The previous Philippine members of the PCA were retired Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno, retired Justice Jose Vitug and Pangalangan.
The PCA formed an arbitral tribunal that in 2016 invalidated China’s sweeping “nine-dash line” claim to the South China Sea and upheld Philippine sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the country’s 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone. —Jacob Lazaro